


With Domains in My Pocket

by klickitats, sunspeared



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Clothing Porn, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Lesbian Wrassling, Magisters, Nevarra, Politricks, Questionable Campaign Donations, Sex Pollen, Size Kink, non-consensual aphrodisiac use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 23:50:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 79,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11172678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klickitats/pseuds/klickitats, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunspeared/pseuds/sunspeared
Summary: Upon receiving an enormous offer of coin from a group of Tevinters led by Maevaris Tilani, Josephine Montilyet heads off to Cumberland, neutral ground, to negotiate with their representative. Inquisitor Lavellan has no love for Tevinters, but she agrees to the plan, under one condition--Josephine must take the Iron Bull with her, and no one else.The Iron Bull is perfectly happy running missions with the Chargers, until the Inquisitor sends him off to Cumberland on a very different sort of assignment: protect the ambassador. Keep her safe at any cost. And ruin her negotiations with Tevinter.Meanwhile, the Inquisition's spies in the city have their own agenda. Their Tevinter contact, a magister, has his own ambitions. And if he can't get what he wants from Josephine, he's more than willing to use Bull as his bargaining chip.





	1. Counterpoint

**Author's Note:**

> s/o to serenityfails for being our stone-cold, keen-eyed copyeditor. We've been working on this fic for a cold year, and hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed writing it. 
> 
> Also! This fic is labeled as a WIP, but fear not, it's actually finished. Barring natural disasters, we'll update on Sundays until all five parts are finished.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A civil disagreement. Josephine wines and dines. Bull gets his ass beat by an elf.

It was two days from Skyhold to Jader, quietly skirting Orzammar, and the endless receptions Josephine would need to attend if they were caught there, as well as the inevitable skulking about to meet with Carta representatives. With favorable winds, it was a day's journey across the Waking Sea from Jader to Cumberland, no more. Two or three, with unfavorable winds. 

The winds had been unfavorable. The journey had been planned to allow for this. She would be on time for her appointment. 

From the corner of her eye, she saw the Iron Bull duck his head to emerge from belowdecks. "We're almost there," she said, when he came to stand beside her at the rail. 

Cumberland was in view, at last: a gleaming line carved into the coastline, stretching in either direction, as far as her eye could see. Their schooner would be dwarfed by the ships in the harbor, though they were too far away for Josephine to distinguish anything but a mass of masts and flags. It was an ugly, boxy little ship, of Fereldan make—had it shown its colors in Antiva City, it would have been used for kindling—but they had needed discreet transportation, and a crew that could be bribed into silence. Leliana had the use of the schooner _Siren's Call IV_ from her disreputable admiral friend.

"You ever been to Cumberland before?" Bull asked, gazing out at the horizon. It was a clear day, and hot. He'd left his harness below, and every inch of him she could see was covered with a fine sheen of sweat. 

"I've taken port there"—once, as a girl, on her first trip to Val Royeaux—"but never left the ship. And you?"

Bull shrugged. "I've read about it."

It was more than Josephine had gotten out of him for the better part of their trip. Oh, he'd spoken to her, and been very pleasant and solicitous, helped her down from the oxcart, carried her valise, but she was not his first choice of assignment, as he was not her first choice of companion. Cumberland was a city of miracles, and one awaited Josephine there: a group of Tevinter magisters, longtime opponents of those who silently approved of the Venatori, possessed of more money than political power or connections, poised and ready to heap gold on the Inquisition.

With conditions.

Inquisitor Lavellan demanded reasoning for every twitch of every sword and quill under her command. It only should’ve taken two months to prod her into the deal. Instead, it had taken an entire year. A year of wheedling and cajoling, and every angle she could make a case for in their Inquisitor’s eyes. No stone unturned, no hook unfashioned, no tactic untried. Not even Josephine was above exhausting her opponents into submission. 

_Herald,_ she had said nearly a month ago, patiently, for at least the thirtieth time, _I don't wish to deal with Tevinters, either. I have no love of their country. They're dreadful. But certain parties do not wish the Venatori to succeed, and there is a pleasure in parting the unthinkably wealthy from their money—_

 _Fine!_ Lavellan had snapped, her hand slapping down on the war table. _Meet with them, if you want it so badly. Just stop climbing up my arse about it, ambassador._

Behind Lavellan, Cullen had eyed Leliana; he had never spoken for or against it, though his slightest word could have swayed the Inquisitor to Josephine's side. Leliana rarely spoke for or against anything in Lavellan's presence, but gave her reports to Cullen and Josephine, and made herself and her work invisible. Josephine was not so taken by her unexpected victory that she couldn’t see the idea unfurl in the Inquisitor's head:

 _But,_ Lavellan had said, _you'll be taking Iron Bull with you._

Iron Bull, who gripped the railing for dear life. The ship pitched, and he breathed in hard through his nose.

"Go back to our cabin," Josephine said. "You can lie down until it passes."

"If it hasn't passed yet," Bull said, "it's not going to."

He inhaled once and stood still as the too-bright sunlight beat down on the deck. It invited comparisons of stone and statues, but only to a pair of eyes less practiced in the art of chipping away at false edges. He held himself with the control of a perfectly curled fist. He breathed in a rhythm not unlike a heartbeat, in time with some invisible metronome Josephine could not hear or decipher. And he did not look at her. Bull only considered the horizon.

He evaluated an opponent, Josephine realized. He would undoubtedly put his body between her and every sword the city held—that, after all, was simply how the Iron Bull operated. There was a tale, told in taverns, whispered by Josephine's aides when they thought she was not listening, of how he had put himself between Sera and the flames of a high dragon, on their long and fruitless campaign in the Western Approach. The wide grey mass of the scar lingered at his shoulder blade. As far as she could tell—and she _could_ tell, for the clearness and fullness of the sunlight, so unlike the pallid mountain sun she had become accustomed to—all of Bull's marks displayed that same stubbornness. There was an idiom for men and women like that in Antiva. The nearest translation was _fond skin_. Unhealable and happy for the scars.

But she and Bull rarely had reason to speak to one another, except to exchange pleasantries when their paths crossed. Occasionally, when he had still been Ben-Hassrath, he had passed along gossip that might be useful to her negotiations, but that well had dried with the sinking of the dreadnought; occasionally, the Chargers had difficulties passing through nobles' lands, and a few words from Ambassador Montilyet was enough to smooth their way.

And she had seen him in the nude. Years ago, and only briefly. In compromising circumstances, perhaps, but it didn't signify. He was half-undressed nearly all the time.

"It's illegal to carry a weapon in Cumberland. You'll have to leave your axe on the ship," Josephine said, without looking up at him. The sails were fat with wind. The city was closer, now. "Our contact will meet us tomorrow morning at an inn called the Diamond Lass. We'll have the remainder of the day to rest. "

"'Magister Boreas,'" Bull said. "He might as well call himself 'Messere North,' if he wants to go by a crappy fake name."

He made an attempt to sound bored. Loosened one of his hands from the rail to scratch at his chest. Yet Josephine could easily identify the tension beneath his voice. Either from the need to mask his true feelings, or to ready himself for what lay ahead. 

Josephine could not dislike him, for all that Lavellan had sent him to sabotage her. Had she a choice, she might have taken Cassandra along with her for protection; she was a Pentaghast, and would command immediate respect in her homeland. She was as good as any fortress wall, and able to deal with hostile mages, too. It was not right, to subject a man who had fought Tevinter for years and years, who had nearly been broken by it, to the company of yet another one, just to handicap one's own ambassador. 

"Magister Tilani herself was not available to meet with us," she said, "but I'm assured that Lord Boreas is a skilled negotiator."

Bull grunted. “I saw Red’s dossier. You know everything from how long he’s served the Archon to the kind of satin his smalls are made from.” 

“Cotton, I imagine,” Josephine corrected, gently. “More breathable in the Cumberland heat.” 

And he gave a dry chuckle. It was the first reaction she’d gotten out of him, other than the kind politeness of acquaintances, since heading out of Skyhold. 

“So then you’ll know,” she went on, “he’s of moderate renown. A man of wealth and heritage.” Moderate meant something more like _mediocre_ , by Tevinter’s standards. He was a patriot of a sort, if he was allying with Magister Tilani and her people, but most likely was looking to make his name. Leliana’s people had collected information on his voting records from the Magisterium, his family connections, his holdings—lands in the west, shares in a silver trading company out of Rivain, ancient magical artifacts (gold-embroidered gloves that could only be taken off by removing the wearer’s hands, and so on), and of course, slaves. 

He interrupted her. “She told me there was a decent chance he wouldn’t be a problem.” Josephine idly wondered what metric Leliana used for _decent_ —a fifteen percent chance, perhaps. It would not be an optimistic number. 

“It _is_ a negotiation. It’s in his best interests to not be.” 

“If we’re lucky, he’s on the same page.” He scratched at his chin before resting both hands back down on the rail. “You handle the, uh, heritage and wealth. I’ll keep an eye on his hands.” 

“Of course,” she said. “That’s why the Inquisitor sent you.” 

The remark didn’t seem to sit right with him, quite, and he only nodded. 

She watched him stare at the horizon line for another moment, how firmly he grasped the rail in front of him, and knew she did not doubt his self control. From her brief conversations with him, and reports from his work in the field, she had no reason to suspect he couldn’t handle himself here. But the Iron Bull was only mortal. Tevinter’s influences lay before them, and a magister, at that. She could hardly expect him to be emotionless. The possibilities manifested themselves rather vividly in a moment of thought. 

She would avoid any undue unpleasantness, then. She would make sure the Iron Bull stayed far away from her mark. No need to tempt fate. Everyone had limitations. He was no exception, and he was not here by choice. The least she could do was make it as painless as possible for all parties involved. 

They docked in Cumberland well past noon—and such handsome docks, well-kept and orderly, with tall ships from every nation imaginable in attendance. An Orlesian _galion_ with golden sails, easily torn by Raiders, and defended by a bevy of smaller ships, which were docked around it like fish following a shark; a trio of Rivaini _carracas_ flying false colors; and a fleet of graceful Antivan _caravelas,_ descended on the city like well-armed swans,their sailors fresh from the siesta and trading insults with the Nevarran stevedores unloading their wares. Just like home. 

She tipped her head back to take in the heat of the sun on her face—no matter how many furs she wore at Skyhold or blankets she piled on her lap, her bones were always cold–the smell of the waters, of stinking fish and the thousand bodies it must have taken to make a harbor of this size run.

Then she turned to Bull. "I'll take only the brown leather valise with me, until the rest of my things can be delivered," she said. "If you would be so kind."

"Sure," he said, and rambled belowdecks to retrieve it.

Leliana had insisted on having an entire team of bodyguards already in the city to ensure her security. This did not chafe so much as it might have, when she'd first joined the Inquisition. One of them, a tall, broad human, met them at the docks, disguised very badly as a stevedore. Her clothes were too clean, her hair was loose, and she stood alone, scanning the crowd, rather than dawdling.

"There's our contact," Bull said dryly. "Not one of Leliana's."

"No," said Josephine, "but I'm sure she's doing her best."

The woman jumped to attention at the sight of them, and began elbowing through the crowd to get to them. "It's one of Cullen's templars," muttered Bull.

"How do you know?"

Bull shrugged. "They're used to the tassets, the skirts. They move faster and lighter when they take them off. It shows in the walk."

"My lady," the woman said, when she got to them, in a Starkhaven accent so thick Josephine could have polished a pair of boots with it, "Ser Belinda Darrow at your service. Come to take you up to the inn, if it please the lady—"

"It does please me, very much," Josephine cut in, as they walked, lest poor Ser Belinda go on forever. There were any number of porters who could take her bags up to the inn; the trick was to find the ones that could be trusted not to make off with her clothes. She had a list, from Leliana's chief of operations in the city. "I wasn't aware that Commander Cullen had taken a personal interest in my trade negotiations."

Ser Belinda had a nervous, puppyish air to her at odds with her straight-backed carriage and stern, sunburnt face, and a quick smile, quelled as fast as it appeared. Josephine very vaguely remembered her name from some report or another. "I've previous experience dealing with this sort," she said. Ah—the incident with Magister Tilani. _That_ was where Josephine knew the name. "Commander said I'd be of use."

"And how do you find Cumberland?" Josephine asked.

"Large," said Ser Belinda. "Full o' mages."

"And how about you?" Bull said.

Josephine hadn’t even noticed the woman who appeared at her side—she was shorter than Ser Belinda, and blandly, unobtrusively pretty: golden skin that spoke of a Rivaini somewhere in her family, thick brown hair, warm eyes, a nose she could sharpen a quill on. A face that could have been from anywhere in Thedas, from Tevinter to the Bannorn. 

“I’m called Miller, my lady, and I think it’s splendid. Miraculous," she said—anywhere in Thedas, until she opened her mouth. Orlesian, with a voice like polished riverstone. Josephine had heard the voice a hundred times, from palace functionaries and merchants trying to disguise their low birth. "Why, there's a shop in the city center that sells—" 

Ser Belinda visibly ruffled at the sentiment. “We’re not here for _gawking_ ,” she interjected, as though Miller was a private who’d spoken out of turn. “You know that.” 

"I was only recommending sights of interest to the lady ambassador, Bel," Miller said, with an elegant bow. Instinctively, Josephine raised her hand, and Miller kissed the air above it. "We're at her disposal, after all." 

Bull snorted under his breath, but said nothing. 

“Well.” Josephine clasped her hands, and from years of practice, did not wrinkle her nose when a cart of half-rotted fish was rolled by them towards the marketplace. “If you're at my disposal, perhaps you can hire me a porter."

"My lady," Miller said, "if you'll forgive my presumption—" 

"She already hired you one," Bel interrupted. "Last night." 

"Great," Bull said. "Now, if we're all done making good first impressions, Ambassador Montilyet's falling asleep on her feet. I hear we've got an inn somewhere?"

In truth, Josephine was doing no such thing, but if anyone could make a pair of young soldiers come to attention, it was the Iron Bull. He was not overtly commanding, no, but his tone brooked no argument. 

The two of them led, Ser Belinda at the head as they navigated through the streets, and Miller just behind her, and Bull at the rear. They took a turn down a wide staircase: gleaming obsidian steps flecked with gold. Flat ceramic pigeons, made in mosaic on the walls guiding them down, glanced back and forth with glittering eyes. Their feathers ruffled. Josephine admired them briefly, and then promptly forgot they existed. It was a city of wonders, and she was no stranger to them. 

The stairs led down into a wide market square the size of both Skyhold's baileys combined, at least: tents in many colors, faded by years and the bright sunlight. The bustle of the lunch hour had faded some, and had settled into the laze of the afternoon. Miller nodded over her shoulder and led them around the outskirts of the market. 

She turned her head to look at the bazaar. A peasant boy played a silver-gilt flute with bright enthusiasm. Scents on the breeze: cocoa, fennel seeds, burned pork. And then, as they passed a jeweler’s stall, the mood of the market began to change. 

A man sifting through baskets of carved beads, laid out in every color Josie could think of, looked up to find his wife and saw Bull instead, lumbering behind an Antivan the size of a pincushion. He dropped his head, searching through a sack so intently Josephine was sure he’d spotted a sovereign at the bottom. The boy continued his flute, but watched Josephine’s steps with a piercing eye: she wondered if he was trying to gauge whether or not she was attempting to put distance between between herself and the Tal-Vashoth behind her. Two herds of children, shepherded by their harangued mother, made an abrupt turn to follow at her heels. One of the boys turned so he could walk backwards at the end of the pack, and get a long look at _the horny man, Mama, don’t you see him?_ A caravan guard rolled his shoulder, stretched the arm holding a pike. 

It crossed the bazaar faster than they could walk, and beat them to the end: a rushing wave of people looking, then looking away, looking in any direction but theirs. 

And then Ser Belinda led them out of the square, and down a quieter street towards their inn. She glanced at Bull behind her, over her shoulder, and he only shrugged in response. 

“Big city,” he said. “Guess they haven’t seen everything.” 

Ahead of them, Miller and Ser Belinda had fallen into step with one another, and were arguing furiously about something. Josephine had stopped listening at their third disagreement. A man passing by them bumped Miller's shoulder, then yelped and limped away.

Josephine said, under her breath, "Did she just…." 

"Break that guy's wrist for trying to pick her pocket and keep on walking? Yeah," Bull said. "You see those bracelets she's wearing? They're all garottes. Knife in each boot, and if you look closely when she turns you can see another one around her neck on a cord, under her shirt. That's why she's only tucked it in at the back." 

"Does it bother you?" Josephine said. "That you can't be armed?"

Bull looked down at his enormous hands. Each of them could have crushed her head like an eggshell. Disembarking from the ship, she had had the brief thought—that he might have simply lifted her down, rather than just steadying her as she went down the gangplank. "A weapon's just a formality for me," he said, and left it there.

The streets got narrower, the farther they got from the bazaar. Every inch of the city was _art_ , from the cut glass set into the cobblestones at their feet, to the immaculate white marble necropolises sitting behind low stone walls. It fatigued the eye, especially when the eye was accustomed to grey stone and browning grass. 

Their inn was no exception. The building curved gracefully, protectively, around a front courtyard, and the largest lemon tree Josephine had ever seen, heavy-laden with fruit. The ivy covering the building had been teased into intricate patterns; the statues of dead ancestors that lined the courtyard were set into niches in the walls, and shaded by their own, smaller fruit trees.

The front door was simple, well-burnished wood with leaves of glass carved across the face, a sliver of a vine winding around a bronze knob. When Ser Belinda reached out and pulled it open, the leaves shivered, tickled by an invisible breeze as it swung wide. 

Bull made a sound under his breath so soft she nearly missed it. Whether it was surprise or derision, it was too quiet to tell. Lavellan’s face appeared in her memory, the corner of her lip twisting as she laid down her demands. _Take Bull._

She turned to him, once they’d made it into the front parlor, and she’d retrieved the keys from the innkeeper, who smiled politely at them from behind her mahogany desk. Bull had to duck, and angle himself a little sideways to get through the threshold. She offered him one of the keys in her hand. 

“Now I must insist,” she said. “There's a room for you, and nothing to do at present.” When he raised an eyebrow, she rested a hand on her hip. “Come now. Go upstairs, Iron Bull. I’ll be joining you in a moment.” 

“Oh, _room_ , milady,” mentioned the innkeeper from behind them. 

Her brow furrowed, and she turned back, peering over the counter to see for herself. “I believe my request…” 

“A suite,” she said, touching her finger to the page. “We’re short on rooms, and your servant here said a suite would be fine.” 

When Miller nodded, an unsure smile on her face, Josephine knew the game—Leliana, of course, and her insistence on Josephine never being more than a few inches away from someone who was willing to defend themselves. She suspected it had taken an act of supreme self-control not to order Bull to sleep in front of the door. 

“Yeah,” said Bull, over her head. His voice rumbled good-naturedly at her back, and he plucked the key from her hand. “Sounds good.” And then he nodded to their chaperones, and made his way up the stairs, her valise still under his arm. 

Once he’d gone, Miller pointed her down a hallway, to a green door just slightly propped ajar. "Scrivener wants to meet with you, my lady," she said, and disappeared into a room. Ser Belinda followed her all the way there. Her misery at tailing Josephine about was palpable, but to call attention to it now would only make it worse. 

Scrivener. Leliana's man in the area. He was not so high-ranked as Charter or Scout Harding, and Leliana mentioned him only rarely: he was Nevarran, he was high-strung, he could break the code in a pile of bird droppings, if Leliana required it of him. His temporary office had been some sort of washroom, once—tasteful wallpaper, and a long, rectangular window ran along the top of the wall, too high for her to peer out of. It was only large enough for an armchair, a few boxes, and the elf sitting there, legs crammed under a table too small to even play cards at. 

Scrivener stood up too quickly when she entered, and banged his knee against the surface. He was brown-skinned, with a full head of black curls. His hands were spidery, wide as plates—or at least they seemed, on his narrow frame—and his fingers drummed anxiously on the table. 

“Please sit,” she said, depositing herself in the armchair. The cushion under her gave a tired _puff._

“Of course.” He sat down, more slowly this time, ignoring the knee. She noticed the lines of his shirt—it fit him impeccably. Perhaps he had been a tailor once, Josephine thought, before Leliana scooped him up. Or perhaps he just had expensive taste. When he spoke, he could not hold eye contact until the end of a sentence. Yet he tried valiantly at the beginning of each. “I hope your journey was smooth?” he asked.

“Quite.” She folded her hands in her skirts. “I assume you’re to brief me on Messere Boreas...” 

“Scrivener,” he said, tapping his sternum, and bent down and began rifling through a crate of papers. "Chief of operations, Cumberland, Nevarra City, Hunter Fell. Reassigned to protecting you. Don't worry if you've never heard of me."

Not the first elf Leliana had promoted to a position of command. Not even the second, or the third. Josephine watched him dig. “Scrivener, then. No need to trouble yourself, I’ve read the dossier—” 

He hauled out an enormous sheaf of parchment, thick enough to use as a shield against a battleaxe. It thumped loudly on the table, which trembled dangerously under its heft. “Only the abridged version, I think.” 

“Well,” said Josephine. 

*

Bull hadn’t expected the room to be nice. Fancy, yeah, with silver pitchers of water and silk tapestries for you to wipe your ass on, and gold leaf on every surface. Pretty as the outside, but meant to impress somebody into coming back. But someone had thought about this. Ordered it to specification. 

He shut the door behind him, careful not to scrape his horns against the threshold when he ducked in. The table in the center of the room was wide enough for his legs to stretch out under, and an enormous armchair sat in the corner—a dull, worn pink that had seen better days. It belonged in a tavern somewhere in a rowdier neighborhood, smelled a little like spilled ale. He dropped her valise on one of the chairs and plopped down without hesitation. It creaked under his weight, but didn’t give. A contented sigh escaped him.

He imagined her asking for it. Writing ahead. _Please bring furniture that will properly accommodate the both of us. My companion is rather broad and tall. Comfort is of the essence._ Unexpected. His kind of nice. _Ensure it is sturdy._ He’d take it. There was a writing desk, the kind Lady Vivienne would insist on calling an _escritoire_ — _do be precise, darling_ —under a window, and a low, overstuffed chaise facing a fireplace. A wardrobe, for all of Josephine's clothes, slightly ajar: they'd already been delivered. Two doors, off to separate bedrooms, and one that went off to a third room, for shitting in. There was a luxury he hadn't seen in a while. 

It was a quiet street. He could still smell the sea from here, without the stench of rotting fish, and the warm breeze swept in through the window. He closed his eyes, let his stomach settle. 

So. Cumberland. 

The trip had been miserable. Bull liked to say—it wasn't true—that he'd only ridden on two boats in his life: the one that took him to Seheron, and the one that took him off of it. Boats were never just _still_. Solid ground wasn’t much better, but at least it wasn’t shifting under his feet like a snake. 

On dry land, no surprises yet. The innkeeper, at least, was good enough to smile at the two of them when they walked in the door, but not good enough to hide the flicker of concern that passed across her face at the first sight of him ducking in under the lintel. Concern, nerves— was he a threat? Was he going to smash the place up?—and then, finally, a look at the woman who'd preceded him into the room. The eccentric noblewoman and her pet, she'd be assuming from the off. It’d be an hour or two before she moved on to worse assumptions—Antivans, Rivaini, all the rest. _Northerners_. If it sat still long enough, they'd hop on it and polish it smooth. 

Welcome to Cumberland, my lady, the woman said, when Josephine checked in. _And keep that thing on a leash_ , her last nervous glance at him added. 

Josephine hadn’t noticed, her eye on the paperwork. Probably for the best. 

There was a knock at the door, and before Bull could stand up to answer it, a blonde dwarf burst into the room, followed by a well-built elf, her mouse-brown hair bound up tightly into a bun, and copper studs dangling from the line of her pointed ears. She stood behind the dwarf and crossed her arms, looking him up and down without a word. A gold ring gleamed in her nose. 

"So, there've been two separate groups plotting our good ambassador's death since it got out she was coming, and we've taken care of both of them for you," the dwarf informed him. "Should be smooth sailing, from here on in—is it too soon for that joke, you still look a little green. Well. You look _grey._ The local Red Jennies've got it in their head that the ambassador is bad for business, so you should watch out for, I don't know, hairs on your food, or whatever they get up to. We're trying to turn them to our side, now, just to have a few more eyes on the ground in the city—Scriv's a local boy, they know him, he's never managed it—but they're a bunch of suspicious little nugfuckers. I'm Cooper, by the way. Tall, dark, and silent here is Fletcher." 

Tall, dark, and silent came up to about the middle of Bull's bicep, and she inclined her head to him. Tall, dark, silent, and armed to the teeth, like Miller. The way she moved, the only weapon Cooper was carrying was a hundred words a second.

"Nice to meet you," Bull said. This was their home terrain, if only by a few days. Good manners were cheap, and if he was going to watch Josephine's back, he'd better make friends with Leliana's people. "You're the muscle?" 

"I'm the muscle," said Fletcher.

"We solve the Inquisition's problems in the Free Marches," Cooper said. "Kirkwall. Starkhaven, Ostwick. Nevarra's just a Free March with pretensions and some spare corpses lying around."

"Don't remind me," Bull replied. He'd spent an eventful month in Minrathous, years and years ago. It hadn't creeped him out as much as the silent, white necropolises he'd seen on the way through the city. Between Cass and Cullen, he'd gotten enough training to sense the Veil around him, at least. No sense in having a Seeker and a templar as friends and not taking advantage of their knowledge. A thousand years of enchanters doing whatever they'd done in that Sun Dome before everything went to crap, and there was magic in every brick and nail of this city. "So you're the fixers," he went on. "Get me up to speed." 

It took an hour. Fletcher didn't say much, if anything. Cooper drew diagrams. These three gangs worked under this fourth gang, this was where the Mage's Collective had its secret headquarters, in case they needed to borrow a mage. These were the symbols that mark local Carta territory, these were the docks where the smugglers come in, here were the city officials the Inquisition had got over a barrel, if he needed to drop a name and get out of a tight spot. 

Bull looked over the sheets of paper covering the table. "You got all this in a few days?" 

"We're not players, but we've had operations here since before Haven fell, yes?" Miller said. She'd joined them, after a little while, and hung off Cooper's every word. Ser Belinda had come, too, buried her nose in a book, did a bad job of pretending she wasn't listening. She sat at the very edge of one of the fancier chairs, like if she leaned back, it’d dissolve. "The five of us, we came to Scrivener a month and a half ago to help clear the way."

So there was another agent he hadn't met yet, but that didn't matter. Josephine had gotten the okay from Lavellan two weeks ago. _She_ couldn't have known. But Leliana had a knack for knowing which way the wind was blowing. "I see," he said. "Nice work, here. Makes Seheron look like a Chantry picnic." 

"Scriv's been in charge for the past year or so, after the last boss got herself done, and he's still getting up to speed," Cooper said. 

"And Chantry picnics are a bit more cutthroat, serah," Bel said.

Bel was one of Cullen's field agents; she had her own crew to run with. The Chargers drank with them—not with, but more, uh, _adjacent_ to—once or twice. Not a sociable bunch, but for Bel and a few others. And here she was, far from her people, with a bunch of weird spies, and not even a weapon to hold. Bull didn't mind if she was a little surly. He understood. But her comrades, and the Chargers, would be fine without them, whether this took a week or a month.

Shit. He hoped it was just a week. "Speaking of picnics," he said, "the ambassador's been gone for a while." 

"Scriv gets going," Fletcher said. "Hard to stop him, once he does. She's safe."

"He did the full dossier on our Tevinter friend," said Cooper. "It's got everything in it but vials of the guy's piss, and I wouldn't put even that past him. You'll be lucky if you see her before morning." 

"If you like," Miller said, "I could try to move them along?”

"I know it's a wide target, and you have to bend over less to do it, but it's not Iron Bull's ass you need to be kissing, Miller," Cooper said, "it's mine. And Scriv's. Keep at it, it's good exercise.” She turned her attention back to Bull. “We'll be out for drinks tonight, while the other one keeps watch here—want to join us?"

"The other one?" Bull asked. The fifth agent, who still hadn't joined them. 

"Yeah, the other one. There's this place down the way that serves… I don't know what it is. Fereldan whiskey, with a dollop of dwarven ale. It'll put you on your ass." Dwarves always thought they could hold their liquor better than he could. He'd had a bit of dwarven ale, straight from Orzammar, and understood why. 

" _I'll_ be going to sing the Chant, if any of you would like to join me," Bel said eagerly. It was the first time she'd looked happy since he'd met her. 

"I would," Miller said, with a wink. Bel didn't return the sentiment, but didn't protest, either, and Miller’s smile only got wider. 

"I need to rest up," Bull said, and started organizing the papers on the table. "The ambassador's got a meeting first thing tomorrow. Some other night, Cooper." 

So they filed out, one by one, Miller all but nipping at Bel's heels as they went. This was going to be a nice, cushy job. No fights—unfortunately—no demons, no Fade rifts. Cooper was a cold professional under the jokes, a real operator, in it for the craft, not the glory, and she liked him. He'd come out of this with some contacts among some of Leliana's far-flung people—contacts that'd serve him, someday. There were just a few 'Vints, and they weren't even Venatori, which meant he couldn't put an axe in them. Yet.

If only Lavellan hadn't sent him here to crap the whole thing up. 

_I'm not going to lie to you, Bull,_ she'd said in the door to his room, the night before they left. _I don't want this deal. I don't want Tevinter money. I'm not saying to interfere with the talks, but when you get there, I want you to do what's right for the Inquisition._

Clear orders, really: sabotage the talks. She wasn't subtle, and she couldn't lie to save her life. Bull had admired her, once—a plain-spoken Dalish elf who wasn't afraid to get up to her elbows in gore to do good work—and he still did. She was a great leader, but she hadn't wanted anything from him but some fun, and he could respect that. 

He was surrounded by professionals. If Josephine remembered that day she walked in on him, she didn't let on. It was how the whole trip would go, more or less. Josephine was here for business; she wouldn’t make waves or fight him on much. She’d have her eyes on the prize, not on whatever he was doing. And he’d get her back without a scratch, delivered to Cullen and Leliana's doorstep. Ruffles intact. 

It wasn’t long before he heard her make her way down the hall, the hard-soled shoes she’d worn on the ship and on the street. She took such small steps—three to every one of his. He’d noticed it in Jader. She still walked like she was balancing seven petticoats and a hoop skirt, and her everyday dresses didn’t require it. 

“You beat your luggage,” Bull remarked, eyeing the fat book in her arms. It was belted around the middle with leather to keep papers from littering the floor. If a draft blew in from the hall, she might tip over. 

There was a desk opposite him, snugly tucked into the corner. She hauled it over, opened a drawer, and dropped it in with a satisfying thunk. “There was quite a lot of it,” she admitted, though Bull didn’t need reminding. Three trunks, big enough to hide a few corpses in, bronze latches glinting in the sun. 

She pushed the door shut with the tip of her foot and crossed to the open window, leaning against the frame. When the warm breeze blew in it fluttered the loose hairs she hadn’t tucked behind her ears. “I’d almost forgotten how lovely a city by the sea is,” she admitted, and her chest rose and fell a little on a sigh. “Settling in?”

A city that smelled of rot and fish-stink. That was stuffed to the last inch with mages and their distractions, and nothing but an open invitation to thieves. _Lovely._ He’d gotten the full measure of it on their walk to the inn. An invader’s wet dream. Gold on every corner, a city guard who spent most of the day scratching their arses, and unassuming citizens who followed the letter of the law. It’d be easy to muscle your way in, turn it all upside down. Cumberland lacked the sharp corners and narrowness of a city made with a shrewd eye—the kind where memory took an architect’s hand and chose defense against luxury. The city either never felt an invasion eyeing its riches and breathing down its neck, or built towers so high they couldn’t remember the bones they rested on. Or they didn’t care. Cumberland curved open as a too-wide mouth, displaying each and every gold tooth, and said _welcome._

“The chair’s a nice touch,” Bull said, instead. “Thanks.”

“Of course.”

He made sure not to glance at the drawer. If she wanted to hide it, she wouldn’t have let him watch her put it away. “I’ve met Red’s people. They’re....”

“Unconventional.” Josephine turned to give him her full attention, elbow resting on the frame of the window. Any weariness from the journey was eclipsed by amusement. Sharing a little joke with him. “Leliana promised me her most interesting characters.” 

“They’ll do,” he told her. “She’s got real talent for recruitment.”

“So do you,” she pointed out. “Only the best, I imagine.”

He grinned a little. Flattering the Chargers was the fastest way to get in good with him. He was a big man; he could admit that. “You got plans in order for tomorrow?”

“We’ll meet at noon, at the Diamond Lass.” She folded her fingers together. “Nothing too long—introductions, first impressions. A toast to negotiations before our hands get dirty, and to take the measure of one another.”

Bull eyed her hands, perfectly manicured and without a spot of dust from the ship, and snorted. “Public?” he asked. 

“I assume the Lass will be cleared out,” Josephine turned her head to look out the window once more. “Nothing I wouldn’t expect.”

He nodded. “Then we’ll need Ser Belinda, for sure,” he said, counting on his fingers. “And Miller, if the two of them can stop fighting long enough to keep an eye on you. And maybe Fletcher.”

Josephine squinted out the window; someone pushed a cart filled with terracotta pots in the street below. Bull could hear the scrape of clay against wood as it rolled over bumps in the cobblestones. “That’s all very well, but hardly necessary as of right now,” she remarked. “I think you’ll be more than enough, don’t you?”

The best way to say no was to wrap it in agreement, especially with her type. He thumbed at his chin and said, “I know ‘Vints. He’s still a magister, at the end of the day. Better safe than sorry, with a couple extra hands on deck.”

Josephine smiled at him. There was no edge to it, which got him worried more surely than anger would. “You do,” she said. “But we’re not here to duel with fire and lightning. We’re here to negotiate, and it’s just as important to our Messere North I walk away happy and whole.”

Yeah, sure, and Bull’s chamberpot was filled with gold nuggets instead of shit every morning. 

She was the best in her field, but this made him shake his head. This was the kind of naivete that got people killed, at the end of the day. Pretending danger didn’t exist ten inches in front of their faces. He didn’t like it. Didn’t like she wasn’t thinking ahead, and of course, she’d decided she was an expert on protection too, now—the one thing he was here to do. 

But she was hardly the first fussy noble he’d guarded, and she wouldn’t be the last.

The only problem was she could tell, immediately. “Iron Bull.” She interrupted his thoughts. “It would give him the advantage from the outset. To bring all of you would be a show of fear. I don’t fear him. I will bring you, and no one else.”

“How many magisters have you dealt with?” Bull asked. Before she could answer, he held up a hand. “I mean, dealt with. Not, you know, courted over letters or bantered with at court. I mean toe to toe.”

"I know exactly what you mean," Josephine said flatly. He was getting to her, making her mad: good. It was clear she hadn’t thought about it. Even clearer that nobody had the guts to tell her no. “Think of it as a trade agreement. Pretend we’re haggling over a trade route to the Anderfels or a silverite mine. It’s not so different, and I’ve done it a hundred times before. What’s at stake, besides a pile of gold?”

 _She_ was. "Me, Belinda, and Fletcher," he insisted. Miller wouldn't carry as many weapons as she did if she was secure in her ability. "And I want to be in the room." 

"For what purpose, exactly?" she asked.

“Come on.” He said it with a smile, as though he was teasing her. She didn’t bite. She stared at him, stone-faced. “To keep an eye on you. I'll even tuck myself in the corner, you won't know I'm there.” Without a weapon, the best way to get her out of danger would be to throw her over his shoulder and run, but he could improvise. 

"You're right," she said, and came to sit on the smaller, prettier armchair across from him. "I suppose I wouldn't. You'd be quiet as a nug. Quieter, even. You're a man of your word, after all." 

Bull nodded. "If our man's not somebody to be afraid of, he won't need to worry about me." 

"Or the templar outside the door, of course."

No one eavesdropping at the door would think this was anything but a nice discussion. No one who hadn't had years of tamassrans making them dissect a person's twitches and clenches would notice tightly her hands were folded on her lap, white-knuckled—her shoulders were relaxed. Her face was smooth and tranquil, but a single tiny line marred the skin between her eyebrows. 

Even he hadn't seen it before now. He hadn't seen _her_. This wasn't a negotiation. This hadn't ever been a negotiation. Part of him knew he'd pay for that, but part of him liked that he'd peeled back a little bit of the veneer. 

"Not even the templar," he said. 

Josephine's smile was kind, and apologetic. "Bull," she said, "the Inquisitor has never taken the slightest interest in my security arrangements. Leliana always handles them, unless the three of us decide I need an honor guard—and then they're Commander Cullen's responsibility. You don't work for either of them. You'll forgive me, if I'm unaccustomed to Lady Lavellan's direct interference. It's quite peculiar." 

"Right," Bull said, and swallowed. He'd never heard Josephine or Leliana call the Inquisitor _Lady_ before. It was an Orlesian thing, holding back the courtesy title until you needed to insult someone. "She's got bigger things to worry about. Rifts. Venatori."

"Quite peculiar," Josephine repeated, as if he hadn't spoken at all. "How irregular of her, to both dictate who my bodyguard should be, and that that bodyguard should be a Tal-Vashoth. Particularly in light of her stated views on Tevinter. Do you know, on this sort of trip, I usually bring along three aides, two scribes, a maid, to help me dress—and a healer, sometimes, for the inevitable attempts at poisoning. We learned that lesson very early. Lady Vivienne recommended the woman herself.

"But I've been forbidden from bringing anyone but you along," she went on. "Why, if Sister Leliana had not already had a large enough presence in the city to spare a few people, I'm sure she would have forbidden me any of Leliana's spies, too."

Bull grunted. Sure, there had been whispers, once or twice, when the ambassador came back from a party out in the country, listless and ash-faced, and nobody saw her for days on end. He could hear Lavellan saying it: _You want to do this? You do it alone. No Inquisition resources._ Good old Red _did_ know what way the wind was blowing, if she'd gotten people in place more than a month before Josephine so much as popped the question.

"Sounds rough," was all he could think to say. 

" _Rough_." Josephine leaned forward, just a hair, and gave him an odd smile. "I suppose you could call it that. I have faced worse odds. But we both know why the Inquisitor sent you here, Iron Bull," she said, "and it wasn't to _protect_ me. You'll forgive me, again, if I'm skeptical of your plans."

She met his gaze, daring him to argue further. There were faint dark circles under her eyes. Bull felt a sudden wave of guilt—it was getting late, and she'd slept better than him on the ship, but that didn't mean she'd slept well. Bull couldn't even imagine how much gold was at stake, and Lavellan had sent her into battle to be humiliated. With just him. 

Here he was, making her life harder. She was right, besides. If she wasn't lying about the healer—he didn't think she was—she put her life on the line for the Inquisition as often as he did, and here he was, telling her how to do her job. If someone had tried to tell him how to break an enemy line, how to ferret out rebels in the jungle, he'd laugh in their face, and then ensure they couldn't use that face for anything but eating gruel for the next few weeks. 

Josie didn't have that luxury. 

"All right," Bull said. "Just me, and I'll wait outside." A moment of silence passed, during which her hands unclenched. 

When she smiled again, there were teeth. "Why, that's very reasonable of you."

"You know I'm not here to mess your deal up, right?" he added. 

"I do," Josephine said. "If I'd thought you were the sort, I would be sitting with Seeker Pentaghast right now. You wouldn't have made it ten meters from Skyhold." 

“You might have waited until the boat. I hear Antivans like their enemies resting at the bottom of the ocean.” 

A sliver of a smile appeared on her face. “Please,” she said. “I try to avoid cliche.”

He said, “I mean it,” because he did. “I got you here safe, and you’re going to leave safe. That’s what I want."

“And I’m doing what I came here to do,” she reminded him pointedly. "My job, whether you like it or not."

"You wouldn't tell me how to swing an axe," Bull said. "Whatever you do with this Boreas is going to help the Inquisition. Good enough for me.” 

They both paused, unsure of what to say in their new truce, until she scooted to the edge of her chair offered him her hand. 

“Really?” he said, looking between her hand and her face, blinking. 

“How else do you seal an agreement?” Josephine asked, and then they shook on it, his big paw dwarfing hers entirely. Her palms weren’t without calluses—even the heaviest creams couldn’t erase how much time she spent scribbling with a pen. 

But his thumb found the smooth marble of her wrist, and she laughed when he squeezed her hand after two firm shakes. A squeak of surprise, maybe even delight, and the line between her brows disappeared. 

*

Even when she cleared her schedule and barricaded her door at Skyhold for a peaceful morning, free from distraction, there was always some crisis that needed Josephine's personal attention: some noble demanding a better stateroom, who would not stop pestering the servants until the ambassador came to smooth her ruffled feathers. An altercation in the main hall over breakfast. The garden on fire, which had happened twice, and only one of those times had been Sera's fault. 

But the streets of Cumberland were quieter than the mountainside. She woke well before sunup, from habit. She had no aides pestering her for her signature on some agreement or another, or permission to forge her signature. Just Bull's steady snore from the next room over. The air was cool, the room quiet. 

When he lumbered out of his room, Bull murmured a sleepy good-morning to her. He took no less than four sweet buns and a rasher of bacon from the tray the innkeeper had sent up for breakfast, poured himself a glass of orange juice, and settled across from her at the table. The corner of his eye was still crusty with sleep. 

"Plans for the morning?" Josephine asked. They had argued; he had seen the error of his ways and capitulated. All was as it should be. There was no reason to make this awkward. 

He yawned. "Bel and Fletcher want to see what I'm made of," he said, scratching at his freshly-shaven chin. It would be stubbled over by noon. "Weapons are illegal, but huge sticks aren't. And I think Miller wants a go, too. They've been cooped up too long. Fresh blood." 

"Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but Fletcher is an elf," she said. Hardly a dainty one—but Bull was enormous. "And Miller is… not small, but smaller than Ser Belinda. Could they…."

"Sure," Bull replied. "I'm big, not invulnerable. I don't wear armor, and I use a maul, so fights are a sprint, not a marathon. If they're smart and stay out of my range, and don't get cocky when they think my guard's down, they've got a fair shot.” He yawned again. “You always like talking about brawling, first thing in the morning?” 

"We're an Inquisition of the sword, Bull," said Josephine. She hadn't heard anyone but Cullen discuss their weaknesses so frankly, and Cullen had a perfect eye for a fighter’s weak spots. "I'm familiar with the concept of fighting. I have work to do, before we meet Boreas." 

"Boreas's dossier?"

"My own," she said, gesturing at the file on her escritoire. "He obtained a copy of a Venatori report on me. I'm told it makes for very entertaining reading."

He chewed a mouthful of dough and bacon. “I bet,” he said, after swallowing. “Tell me if they’ve thought up any good nicknames for you.” 

“Oh?” He spoke like he had experience with it. 

“Eventually, you pick your own.” He thumbed his nose. Of course. _The Iron Bull._

He finished his breakfast and left Josephine to work at her desk. It was not quite as entertaining as promised—long, dry, propagandistic, utterly incorrect rambles about her complicity in the persecution of mages under the Inquisition, punctuated by incisive points of humor. They referred to her as _the isle of Antiva_ , because Lavellan took so little interest in diplomacy. And, almost poetically, _the velvet gloves on the tyrant’s hands_. _La Colombe,_ her nickname in Orlais. _The Little Dragon. The Flotilla_ , for her famously enormous staff.

An hour or two had passed by the time the ruckus reached her window, and by then she was looking for a reason to be distracted. The clatter of wood, shouts, and someone swearing rather loudly. She could recognize Bull’s deep rumble anywhere—a violent oath, and then easy laughter. 

Josephine found herself peering down into the courtyard. As promised, there stood Fletcher, who applauded in slow mockery. Ser Belinda openly stared. And Miller was bent double, catching her breath as Bull sat on his backside in the center of it all. Each of them held wooden practice staves—Bull’s, thicker than the rest, and at least half a meter longer, was still clutched in his hand. Bellinda carried what looked like the lid of a barrel for a shield.

“You’re quick,” he said, a little touch of awe in his voice, and even from here she could see Miller grin. 

“I know,” was her reply, and he snickered. “Thank you, ser.” 

Josephine watched the Bull heft himself back up. The sun blazed above them—it wasn’t long till noon, but the Cumberland sun only needed a few moments to roast all who stood beneath it. He was covered in sweat, and it dripped through the dust on his back. He pointed at Belinda, and then Fletcher with the tip of his staff. “Who’s next?” 

Of course, Ser Belinda volunteered instantly, just as Miller stepped out of range. She darted up to Bull, saluted with her fist across her breast, and then slid forward to attack. Ser Belinda had speed on her side—everyone must, when it came to Bull. She darted in and out of the swing of his staff, but what she couldn’t account for was raw power. His blows landed on her makeshift shield like thunderclaps. She shouldered each one before diving in at every gap. She did not care for how hard he struck; she only seemed aware of space, distance, and how she could slip in closer. Ser Belinda landed light strikes on his shoulder, his arm, but they had all the lasting power of nips from a mosquito. 

For all her talk yesterday, Josephine couldn’t recall if she’d ever seen the Bull handle his weapon. Sometimes Antivan duelists, on the hottest summer days, would battle with rapier and loincloth only. But here, she watched the muscles in his back clench as he blocked one of Ser Belinda’s blows and then advanced, his massive shoulders rolling on each swing. Bull was nothing close to graceful. He was heavy on his feet, but every movement forward was as self-assured as a battering ram. A confidence of rhythm. She could almost count it, like a waltz. But not quite. 

She watched Ser Belinda take a risk—darting too close, and Bull landed a blow to her thigh she could not parry with her shield, a _smack_ Josephine could feel all the way up at her window. Miller’s face narrowed in concern; Fletcher watched as though she had money bet on the outcome of the sparring. 

To her credit, the blow only slowed Ser Belinda a little, though by the end no one could tell the victor. A servant from the inn brought out scraps of rough linen for towels—she watched Bull rub the back of his neck, slide the cloth down the tendons, pat absently at his chest. He told a joke that made Miller laugh, and Ser Belinda set her mouth in a hard, disapproving line. 

And then it was too close to noon for her to stand at the window any longer—business waited, and watching Inquisition agents stave off boredom from her window had little to do with why she was here. 

Then Fletcher broke her staff in two over her knee, and all talk stilled. 

Miller fisted her hand in the back of Ser Belinda's shirt and all but dragged her backward. At some point, Cooper had materialized, and sat deep in the shade, fanning herself. Bull watched Fletcher test the weight of each half of the stick in her hand, toss it up in the air, then catch it, and when she was satisfied, she advanced on him.

Once, at Haven, Josephine had watched Cassandra tear through cocksure recruits as though they were old parchment, while Cullen explained their errors to them and their assembled peers. Now, she found herself nearly leaning out the window to watch Fletcher test Bull's defenses, always cautious, always a step ahead of his broad swings. She ignored what, so far as Josephine could tell, were Bull's feints, and turned aside his blows, on such rare occasions as he came close to hitting her. After the second smack to the back of the knees, the third to his jaw, and the fourth to his thighs, Bull, with a broad, terrible grin, held up a hand and planted his staff firmly in the soft ground. 

An acknowledgment of defeat. Fletcher had killed him several times over. His chest was heaving, as Fletcher clasped his forearm and nodded her acceptance. Then, she turned and walked to sit in the shade next to Cooper, who mopped at Fletcher's brow and offered her a drink from a waterskin. Josephine became conscious of precisely how far she was leaning out the window, and pulled herself back in—but not before Bull chanced a glance upward, and saw her. 

Their eyes locked and she froze, like a child caught with her hand in the sweets, before she remembered herself and waved her fingers at him. A flutter to beckon him up. He nodded before turning back to the others, and then she carefully turned from the window, and went back into her room. She certainly didn’t flee. 

It would be suitable cover. They were due to leave for the Lass within the hour.

Josephine chose her gowns carefully before they’d even set foot out of Skyhold. Boreas would not only understand style, but expect it. The white-and-gold and the purple silk were too dramatic for a first meeting. The gold was frivolous— _so Antivan—_ and would not make a good first impression on a Tevinter. The black made her look as tall as any article of clothing could, but it would stifle her in the day's heat, and was meant only for meetings with dour Pentaghasts who wanted to meet with her to curry the Inquisition's favor. She had none planned, but surely, word of her arrival had spread, and piqued curiosities. The invitations would come.

That left only the delicate, pale-yellow muslin, cut modestly and high at the neck, and richly embroidered up the front and round the front of the sleeves, fastened at the waist by a broad, sky-blue ribbon. Beautiful, but not youthful. Tasteful, but not plain. Heavy gold earrings would save the effect from being too Orlesian. 

By the time Josephine heard Bull make his way up the stairs—she’d know the sound of those heavy footfalls anywhere by now—she'd gotten herself most of the way into the dress, but for a button in the center of her back, which she had never been able to reach without help. Scrivener had declined the inn's offer of a lady's maid on her behalf, citing the difficulty in vetting whatever girl came up to her room.

The door opened and closed. “You in here somewhere?” 

Josephine peered out from her bedroom. Bull stood there, grimy with dust and sweat from the courtyard, one of the inn’s linen towels wrapped around his neck. 

“I don’t want to be late,” was all she could manage to say. 

He looked her up and down, just once, taking in the effect of the dress. She didn't need his raised eyebrow to know she looked very well in it, but it helped. "Need some help?" he asked.

"If you would." 

He stepped out of her view, and there was the sound of him splashing his hands in the basin, before he reappeared and ducked under the threshold. “Clean,” he said, wiggling his big hands that had been swinging a staff around like a toothpick a quarter of an hour before. “And ready to work."

"It's only one button," Josephine said, and turned around. 

He bent low to see what he was doing, and, very carefully, slid the cursed thing into its hole. If she'd thought more than a step ahead, if she'd thought he had a particular interest in her, she'd have made some reason to have him do them all up. 

But even with just one, she could feel him pull the material of the dress across her back, the sound of his fingers against the muslin. She could smell the acrid scent of his sweat, and the dry warmth of his skin from sparring in the morning heat. Dust from the wind and the courtyard, as though she were herself outside, her face turned to the bright sun and the blue sky, listening to whatever joke he’d told Miller to make her smile, watching his mouth slide into a wide grin. It was sudden, unexpected, and then it was done. 

He dropped his hands. Whatever thoughts had lingered abruptly disappeared. It had been an unendingly long time since she found herself in a room, alone, with someone touching her with anything but the distant manner of a servant. They were nothing but professional. Besides, anyone and everyone was curious about the Bull. Everything about him said _reassurance,_ from the way he stood in a room to the way he asked a question. An impossibility, then, to not lean towards it. 

“Thank you,” she remembered to say. 

“No problem.” He nodded. “You look good.” 

Before she could answer, he lifted one of his arms and sniffed, and left the room again.The sound of water, again, as he dumped the basin over his head, and then the contents of the pitcher sitting on the stand beside it. She waited at their table until he appeared from his bedroom with a clean pair of pants, a disaster of blue and orange. 

The walk to the tavern was entirely uneventful—the second glances at Bull couldn’t be helped, but Josephine was merely well-dressed, not ostentatious, and their destination wasn’t far. Nothing like their journey through the bazaar. By the time they reached the Diamond Lass, with its exquisitely done sign, embedded with glass and gold, sweat had only broken out along her hairline. She dabbed at it with a handkerchief. 

"Two women, one man, right next to the door," Bull murmured in her ear, peering at the tables set up outside. Josephine followed his gaze to the group he spoke of. Magister Boreas's assumed—she did not doubt Bull's judgment— bodyguards looked like any well-dressed group of young people, joking amongst themselves. "The one woman's a mage." He snorted dryly. "Somebody's trying to outdo you."

“Let them try,” she said. “Now—where will you be?” He nodded towards where Boreas’ guards sat idly. “Ah. In the thick of it.” 

He glanced down at her, and then back at the door. Trying to fight his strong instincts to be overbearing, to check she was sure of her ability to sit across from a magister and sip at wine. But whatever he thought, he only said, “I’ll be right out here.” He raised an eyebrow. “Definitely within screaming distance.” 

“I won’t be long.” She looked at Boreas’ people, who seemed bored to tears. “Behave.” 

He opened the heavy wooden door for her, waiting until she was inside to pull it shut behind her. And then he was gone. 

The interior was furnished in the style of a traditional Orzammaran tavern, down to the short, violently uncomfortable wooden chairs, though a full half of them had been built along human lines. Boreas had not bought out the inn for the meeting, as Josephine might have done. There were patrons other than themselves: well-dressed dwarves, mostly, dropping in for a noon ale before going about their business.

Josephine spotted him immediately: a tall, gaunt man at a corner table, with beringed fingers folded over a book, addressing a serving girl, who covered her mouth with the back of her wrist to stifle her laugh, and set a crystal bowl before him. He wore pure white robes, and an silver-embroidered sash draped over his shoulder, elegantly. He looked less greasy than she might have expected him to be, from her past (mercifully short) in-person dealings with Tevinters, from the simpering tone of the missives she received from the Imperial Chantry, and from the sheer amount of hair pomade Lord Dorian had gone through, in his very brief time with the Inquisition.

When no assassins fell from the ceiling to cut her throat, she approached. Boreas cleaned his fingers with a linen napkin and stood swiftly before she could open her mouth. “Ambassador Montilyet,” he said, in a deep, round voice that had inclined towards sweetness with age. White hair at his temples—perhaps in his early fifties. _Distinguished_. A dozen generations of careful Tevinter breeding could hardly fail to produce an attractive specimen. “A pleasure to meet you.”

“And you, Lord Magister,” Josephine said.

Without flourish, he took her hand, bowed over it, and kissed the air above it. His fingers and palms were so soft as to be unsettling. Here was a man who had never in his life touched anything more coarse than a particularly haggard old book, or else had the time and means to rid himself of his calluses as soon as they threatened to mar the perfection of his skin. She thought, briefly, on the rasp of Bull’s palm on the silk of her dress, when he'd guided her up a narrow flight of steps on the way here. 

When she turned, Boreas had already pulled a chair out for her. As displays of magical ability went, it was hardly ostentatious, but she liked it no more than she'd liked his hands. But arrayed before her was a small feast. Two bottles of wine. Heaps of olives. Crusty white bread, still steaming faintly from the oven. At least three varieties of ham, sliced thin as paper, hot sausages, and _cheese—_ none of those dull, stinking Fereldan cheeses she was subjected to at Skyhold, but wedges of hard Antivan _piave mezzano,_ among others she would have to taste, to name.

“My secretary is Antivan, you see,” Boreas said, when Josephine finally looked up at him. “I asked him what sort of food his old grandmother might serve at a luncheon. I did my best to recreate his suggestions. A taste of home, for you.”

She could not be overawed by this; he was trying to impress her. Of course he would go to extravagant lengths. “It’s very accurate,” she said, and uncorked one of the bottles. It was a crisp white—the sort—Boreas had clearly put some thought into this—one's elderly, lascivious aunt might drink chilled on a hot afternoon, while being fanned by a pair of handsome serving boys. When she poured the wine into their glasses, the runes etched along the side flared with a soft emerald light, and they frosted over immediately: another of Cumberland's tiny wonders. Josephine made sure to look suitably impressed.

They raised their glasses. “To a smooth path,” he said, the smile on his face just small enough to give the impression of earnestness, “and a better world.” 

“Indeed.” When the rims touched, the runes glowed and shivered.

By the time she set her wine down, he had unfolded one of the fine linen napkins across his lap. For all of his posturing, the look in his eyes meant business. It was a relief of sorts. 

“Your Lucerni,” she began, as though testing the name in the air. 

Boreas knew the cue. “Tevinter’s finest. With trained eyes on the horizon and gold to spare.” 

“I can imagine.” Josephine leaned against the tall back of the chair. “But there are a thousand merchants vying for the Inquisition’s attention.” 

He smiled. This was more gold than any businessman from the Korcari Wilds to Par Vollen could manage, and they both knew it. 

“Ah, but, Ambassador,” he murmured, sincerity dripping from the press of her title. “How many coins in your coffers can be traced to such a noble goal? The Venatori have left their marks on the Inquisition, despite how whole you remain.” 

True enough. Josephine recalled countless reports of their attempts to take back the desert—in particular, Griffin's Wing Keep. A slaughter, demons coming up through a well, meant they lost the keep for a fortnight. One of Cullen’s captains led the charge with their remaining troops and an extremely well-executed dragon lure. Once recaptured, the report painted a clear, dry picture of the carnage: those captured within by the Venatori were found in pieces, tagged and labeled in scrawling hand. _Like meat for the market_ , it said. Not to mention the wounds borne by every member of the Inquisitor’s inner circle, during the campaign. 

“They cannot grow in power,” she replied, with a nod. 

He smiled again—small enough to be nearly real. “I so prefer when negotiations begin with agreement.” 

The money on offer was enough to fortify their every outpost in southern Orlais. To outfit their army twice over. To repair those parts of Skyhold that were still held together with string and spit, even after so many years—to bribe every petty official in Orlais, and Ferelden, too. It was more than the Montilyet family had made from their businesses in three ages. Whether she would accept it—that was not in question. 

But the gift could not possibly come without strings. A gift this grand meant the conditions numbered as high in count as the Venatori themselves. That was truly why she sat here, making note of Boreas’ every statement. The gold was good as theirs, but how? 

“From my brief correspondence with the lady magister,” Josephine said, “I know such a well-placed investment is only a piece of your strategy.” 

“Quite.” His eyes danced. She knew the look. The list would be as long as she was tall. Even so, she had a full week to ensure the Inquisition got the best of the bargain. More, if necessary. She'd brought enough clothing that she needn't be seen in public wearing the same dress twice for a month. 

“Well,” she replied, taking another sip of wine and eyeing a black-purple olive, “what does your generosity require I concede?” 

He started with what was material: a number of books, he said, that had disappeared from Tevinter circles over the years. Tomes on the history of the Veil, and the grand legacy of their attempted alchemy. He mentioned something about the narrative of a mage who built enchanted armor entirely from bird feathers. It could not be pierced by bolt, arrow, or lightning, and while the armor still hung in some noble’s great halls, its notes had totally disappeared. 

“Only if your colleagues come across them in your travels,” he said lightly, a curious glint in his eye, which Josephine knew meant the Inquisition certainly had them already. (She would send a note along to Dagna, and let her know her mischief now had a deadline. There were enough free hands at Skyhold to copy them all, if she deemed it necessary.)

And research, too—everything the Inquisition knew of the rifts in the Fade. Lavellan was a hunter to her bones, and wanted to know as much of her prey as she could before she killed it. She submitted to endless examinations of her hand with good cheer. She sent Solas and teams of researchers out into the field, with full complements of templars attached to them, lest the mages bring something unsavory home. She could not know she'd spawned an entire magical discipline, and would not care to hear of it; the Inquisition's monopoly on the information was a not insignificant source of its power. Josephine and Leliana parceled it out in dribbles.

“I'm sure Tevinter scholars have made their own inquiries,” Josephine said. "There is potential for a fruitful exchange." 

Boreas replied, with a little shrug of his shoulders, “We can thread the needle, of course. But we do not have the advantage of your Inquisitor's… equipment." He waved his hand. The large sapphire embedded in one of his rings caught the light. She kept her eyes on his—she was certain a collection of stars swirled within the gem, but that was a child’s distraction. "Eat, my lady Ambassador. I'm sure you must be eager for a taste of home." 

And so she did. It was exquisite. As they ate, Boreas listed off more of his conditions: Inquisition protection for the group's trade caravans in Orlais. Josephine's own assistance in forming connections with Antivan merchants—letters of introduction, and the like. A small Tevinter presence at Skyhold. A complement of Inquisition templars to suppress a particularly large rift outside of Carastes, Boreas's own home city. There would be more, Josephine was sure. The Inquisition's solicitors, the only staff afforded to her by Lavellan, would earn their pay at the end of this week. She committed to nothing.

"Magister Tilani speaks highly of you, you know," said Boreas. "And the Pavus boy, too. I visited them in Qarinus, on my way to Cumberland." 

"The lady magister is very gracious," Josephine replied, and finished off the ham. She did not much care to speak of Lord Dorian. She had borne witness to Lavellan's final argument with him, and it had been a staggering piece of ugliness. "We're only occasional correspondents. I was shocked, when she approached me with such an offer."

“She understands very little can be done alone.” The way he spoke was the type of flattery intended to teach her something. _I am already here,_ she thought, with a pinprick’s worth of irritation. No need to sell her on the merits of the negotiation—unless he had a truly preposterous line item planned. She doubted it would be put on the table now. “And that collaboration comes from unexpected places.” 

“The Inquisition itself is proof of it,” she agreed. For the most part. Technically, all of Thedas was represented—she thought of Bull’s lieutenant, Krem. Even if the magister would never recognize him as Tevinter for his purposes, he still served the aims of the Inquistion. More than served. Thrived, as did the rest of the Chargers.

His smile was a touch too wide. “I’ll hold you to that,” he said, tapping the side of his nose. Without a doubt. He glanced at the plates they’d left—all that was left were crumbs and an olive flecked with bits of lemon peel. “I confess, I thought my plans might go to waste.” 

He spoke of the food, of course, and not their negotiations. “A taste of home,” she said with a little smile. He nearly preened at her thanks. “I’m grateful for it.” 

“You seem”—Boreas took a moment to select his words—“ _above_ some of the foolishness I expected. I thought it would take you a week to eat with me.” He fluttered his fingers. “A very pleasant surprise.” 

Josephine glanced at the empty wine bottle, and by the time she opened her mouth, he was in place to gently interrupt. He had never intended for her to respond at all. 

“Now, now,” he said, ever a comfort, “there’s no need to pretend. Everyone knows the reputation of how carefully the Inquisition guards its advisors.” Which was to say, he knew Leliana’s reputation. The incident with the House of Repose had been regrettable. Lavellan had wanted an example made, to rival Andraste on her pyre. Josephine had had no say in the matter. “Foolish," Boreas went on, "to eat food from an evil magister, especially with your pet waiting outside, where he can’t save you, should it turn out the spies that have been following me for months were wrong."

"My pet," Josephine said, and on instinct turned to the large, clear windows at the front of the tavern. She could see Bull clearly—he sat at one of the charming tables with Boreas's bodyguards, and had two of them doubled over with laughter. The third, the mage, watched him with a stony suspicion that even he could not charm away, apparently. The sun threw his scars into high relief. "I'm sorry, I don't take your meaning."

Boreas, too, watched Bull through the window. When Josephine turned back to the table, he still watched. There was curiosity in that gaze, a detached look she had seen on Minaeve’s face, more than once, when they still shared an office—just before she’d lift her scalpel and make a careful incision in one carcass or another. 

“Messere?” she pressed.

He smiled again, all too brief. For the first time, a hint of teeth. She found herself making careful note of it, and leaned in just so as though she were about to make a remark, to redirect his attention back to her. It should not have thrown her so. But there was relief, the smallest breath of it, when their eyes met again.

“Apologies.” He drummed on the table with a quick motion of those soft fingers. “My mistake. Your bodyguard.” 

Josephine doubted it was a mistake at all. “All is well,” she reassured. 

Boreas folded his napkin neatly and placed it on the table beside his plate. “This is your first visit to Cumberland, is it not?” When Josephine nodded, his eyes glowed a little with delight. “Then I must insist—a new venue, for our next meeting. The Lass is only one splendor the city has to offer.” 

“You're the one picking up the bill, ser,” Josephine said, and then he laughed. 

“An Antivan with a sense of pragmatism.” He leaned back in his chair. “Indeed, you are rare in every country.” 

Josephine had had worse barbs at her nationality from a moderately frustrated Celene. She allowed it to roll off her shoulder, as Bull had shrugged off Miller's blows of this morning, and settled the week's itinerary with Boreas: a tour of the Universiteit Cumberland grounds and library, followed by an exclusive tour of the finest silk dyers the city had to offer—no doubt Boreas thought that, as her family was _in trade_ , she would be interested in these things. He was not entirely wrong, which grated at her, unreasonably. 

When she'd walked out of the tavern, even Boreas was reluctantly smiling at whatever story Bull had stopped telling as soon as she was in earshot. 

And then, without further ado, they walked back to the inn, Josephine regaling Bull with all the plans Boreas had contrived for her visit. Bull listened intently. He did not offer much, his eyes trained on their surroundings, especially anyone who passed them by, and especially at the graveyard and necropolises they passed. But she could tell he took in every word. Again, she was reminded how little escaped Bull’s notice. 

"And then a ball at the house of some Pentaghast of his acquaintance, which I declined, for the sake of poor Scrivener's nerves. And _then_ a sail across the entire length of the bay.” She’d declined that too, remembering Bull’s unsteadiness on the ship from Jader. “And then the butterfly gardens. And he wants to have dinner in the College of Magi itself," Josephine said. 

“Subtle," Bull said. 

"Will it be a problem?" 

"I don't know." Bull scratched at the shell of his ear. "Are there gonna be demons running around the place? Mages trying to set me on fire?" 

"It's nearly deserted, as I understand," Josephine said. Scrivener had explained to her, last night, once he'd moved from Boreas to a lengthy disquisition on Cumberland politics. With the rebel mages lost, what was left of the College of Enchanters was largely concerned with protecting their libraries from vultures. "What did you think of his guards?" 

"The woman's related to him, I think," said Bull. "She's got his nose. I think she might be his apprentice, from the way she talked about him. The other two were hired on for this trip specifically. They say he's paying them well, and they don't know him well enough to make jokes about him." He paused, with a look on his face that communicated, _Or they're not joking because they're scared of him_. " They called you an 'Antivan wedding cake,' though." 

Josephine looked down at her dress, which perhaps had a few more flounces than was strictly necessary. "I'm sure I'll keep their opinions in mind when next I dress," she said. 

He huffed a little laugh. “They haven't seen the half of it, I bet _._ ” 

“Well,” she said, with a little wave of her hand, and then after they fell into a comfortable silence. 

“It makes sense so far,” Bull finally said, with the air of someone thinking aloud. 

“What do you mean?”

“His little tour.” Bull wrinkled his nose a little. “Lot of flash and distraction for business.” 

She shrugged. “He’s no different than anybody else trying to make a good impression. The aim is to dazzle me.”

“Yeah, but.” He made a thoughtful grunt in the back of his throat. “A little amateur, don’t you think? Seems like the kind of thing you’d do for some cousin up from the country for the first time. Take you under his wing, keep you from sticking your nose in everything."

The way he mused about it made her look up at him suspiciously. Did he think she was susceptible? For a moment, she thought they had stumbled upon the precipice of an argument, especially when he went stone silent for a moment. _I told you I was perfectly capable of handling myself, Iron Bull,_ she would say. _This is nothing that had not occurred to me. I'm Antivan; of course he thinks I'm an utter buffoon._ Then Bull would insist he had some special insight into the Tevinter mind that she lacked, and it would continue until they returned to the inn, and she _would_ send him back to Skyhold for it. Insubordination was insubordination. 

But he had sped up, so that he walked half a step in front of her, his focus knifepoint-sharp. As though he’d need to dart in front of her, throw himself up like a wall. 

They had been walking along one of the city’s great manors, a white and grey limestone beauty with a perfect iron-wrought fence, spiked with jet-black diamond points—and having moved too close to it, the fence had begun to undulate, like a snake. A warning for those who were not the masters of the house attempting to pass the threshold. Every inch of him was trained on it. If it moved to strike, he’d catch it by the throat, wrestle it to the ground. 

She made a point of putting some distance between herself and the iron spine. When they turned the corner, it clinked back into place post by post. 

“Sorry,” he said, thumbing at his chin. “I was saying—he wants to impress your, uh, sense of _beauty_ , or whatever—and then use it to distract you.” His voice was curious, betrayed none of the watchdog-tension his whole body held a moment before. The change was stunning. “He thinks he can play you. He doesn’t know the first thing about you.” 

“No,” Josephine said, pleasantly surprised. “Not at all. Let's be sure he doesn't figure it out, shall we?” 

The conclusion that the Tevinter dossier had drawn was that she was cunning, after a fashion, but that her success was owed to her being consistently in the right place at the time, married to a bit of skill at the Game. In truth, there _had_ been any number of happy accidents, which she had arranged, painstakingly. When she'd bumped into Sister Nightingale and knocked her drink out of her hand at a dull party, so many years ago, it had been the culmination of a month of research. 

Bull snorted. “You got it,” he said. “Doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who likes being wrong, and he’s already got you tied up in his head like a present.” 

Knowing Bull’s habits, the image his words brought to mind were immediately tossed to the wayside. Any warmth was easily attributed to the dull blaze of the afternoon sun above them. They had taken the long way back to the inn in the name of conversation, after all, and sweat prickled at her hairline. She dabbed at it with a lace handkerchief produced from her pocket. 

When they rounded the next corner, the inn appeared, and the shade of its lemon tree was mouthwatering. And then, Bull asked, as though the thought had just skirted across his mind, “He say anything about me?” 

Nothing accusatory or antagonistic. But Josephine knew he’d been mulling it over—his tone was the verbal equivalent of a shrug of his big shoulders. Too casual to be spur of the moment. But it was plain he was asking something else. _Am I going to be a problem?_

Boreas had called him a _pet._ Worse— _your pet._ As though Bull belonged to Josephine herself. The distant way he’d looked out the window at Bull, and the smooth, unworried tone of his voice as he said the words—the memory was as keen as though it had happened but a moment ago. Her stomach churned. Nothing had happened. A casual display of the fragmented relationship between the qunari and Tevinter. But nothing in her quieted. 

She could not say no. She had no desire to lie to Bull, even to smooth things over. As she folded her handkerchief back into a neat square she simply said, “He noticed you.” 

“People do that.” 

“Of course,” Josephine continued, “he noticed my accent meant I was from Antiva City, not Rialto Bay, and that the runes on our goblets needed to be re-inscribed, as they had lost a little of their potency.” 

“Of course,” Bull grunted, in an affected imitation, “I’m a little bigger than a goblet.” 

She could not resist smiling; the wry look in his eye reassured her. “I’m sure it will become a topic of conversation at one point or another,” she conceded, because it had already happened, however brief. She was certain it wouldn’t be the last. “But for now—” 

“Eyes on the prize.” 

“Indeed.” 

He opened the gate for her, and they walked up the little stone path to the inn. At the door, she reached quickly—she’d noticed how the little, constant acts of magic in Cumberland’s architecture made him stiff in the neck. But he seemed to be of the same mind, and their hands brushed as they reached for the heavy bronze knob. 

“I got it,” he said gruffly, and she let him turn the latch. He was quick about it, pulling it wide until he could nudge it with his foot, his hand dropping from the wood. She slid inside, the hem of her dress sliding over his heavy boot, the sound of the lace brushing against his horrible trousers. 

The leaves on the door shivered, as though tickled by the dry afternoon wind. This time she could hear the silver tinkle they made, a chime to guide them inside. 


	2. Kingmaker Scenario

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Requests, made over dinner. Josephine loses her temper. Bull does up some buttons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _A kingmaker scenario, in a game of three or more players, is an endgame situation where a player unable to win has the capacity to determine which player among others is the winner._
> 
>  
> 
> s/o to Katie, as always.

It took two whole days to for the city of Cumberland to figure out that the Inquisition was in town, and another day for the invitations to start piling up. Josephine sniffed her mail out like a bloodhound, and caught Scrivener red-handed trying to hide it from her. 

"The security will be a nightmare, my lady Ambassador," Scrivener argued. "Better to keep your visit discreet. Cooper and Fletcher have been across half the city, clearing your path."

Josephine nodded, like what he said was very reasonable and she agreed with every word of it, and then picked the first envelope from the pile. "A house party at the Forsythia family estate," she said, "and it's this evening. What a delight."

Then she turned on her heel and brushed past Bull to leave Scrivener's elf-sized office. Bull stood in the doorway, looking down at Scrivener in his armchair.

"No arguing with that one," Scrivener said, looking up far enough to speak directly to Bull's chest. His accent got heavier when he was nervous. 

"No," Bull said. "None at all."

"Guess I'll send Miller with you. She's itching to get out of the inn and flex her aliases, but the ambassador won't take her anywhere. It'll give Ser Bel a rest, anyway. What do you think, serah?"

That if Scrivener was any more wound up, Bull could flick him, and he'd shatter into a thousand pieces. Still, they'd walked the streets without any problems. Coming up in the Ben-Hassrath, you got to know a very old spy when you met one: brilliant and paranoid. If even half of what Cooper had told him when they'd gone out to the tavern down the road was true, he had a whole silent machinery devoted to keeping watch on the flow of people, traffic, and ideas from Orlais to the Free Marches.

 _I sure as shit don't have the stomach for the place, or the people, but it's too bad Scriv wasn't stationed in Orlais. When it comes to the Game, he's got balls the size of my head,_ Cooper had said, downing the ale the bartender put in front of her. Josephine was going to faint when she saw the tab they'd run up. _But Marquise Briala aside, it's a little hot there for elves at the moment. At least he's not being wasted in the asshole of Ferelden, like Charter._

"I like Miller," Bull said. If he had to have a partner. She thought fast, and she wasn't bad in a fight, from what he'd seen. She wasn't good, either, but she got the job done. "I can work with her."

Scrivener scratched his chin. "Good. Tell me how she does. And the other one will be there, too."

"The other person Leliana sent?" 

"Yeah, her," said Scrivener, with a grimace. "I don't tell her where to go."

Which was more detail than Bull had gotten out of Cooper and Fletcher, about someone he'd never so much as seen, but the two of them alleged came in and out of the inn all the time. If not for the pained look on Scrivener's face, he'd have been ready to accept that it was just a prank the two of them were playing on him. "I'll take the rest of these to the ambassador," Bull said, ducking in long enough to pick up the rest of the envelopes.

Back in their suite, Josephine was bent over waist deep in one of her trunks, rummaging around for something. Draped over the back of Bull's armchair was a bright red expanse of fabric. 

"Scrivener is sending Miller along, too," Bull said, to let her know he was there. 

"Very well," Josephine replied, her voice muffled. She didn't pull her head out of her trunk. She was too trusting. He could have killed her twice. "That's your uniform," she added. "Gloves, trousers, and the like. We didn't have boots made for you, at the time, because you weren't coming along to Halamshiral."

Bull ran a hand over the red fabric. Vivienne had taught him enough about clothes for him to recognize it as a nice, light wool. He picked it up, then scowled. "You want me to wear a shirt?" 

"It's a _jacket,_ Bull," Josephine said. "It has _epaulets_. They're wonderful. I chose them myself. In any event, I've a spare uniform for someone of Miller's size; have Scrivener find me a tailor, if you would? And have Miller brought in for it to be fitted. _And_ "—she held out an envelope, already wax-sealed and stamped with the Inquisition's signet, which she kept on a chain around her neck—"have him have this sent to the Forsythia house." 

Miller was halfway across the city with Cooper and Fletcher, Bull knew, dealing with an agent who thought he could play both sides of the field and get out of it alive. Scrivener ran every agent in the city, and clearly didn't have time to find a tailor or dispatch messengers, but Josephine didn't care. She was the most important person in this universe. Everything revolved around her, right now. 

Which was how he ended up standing next to a table of canapes, trying not to adjust the big blue sash, the belt, or the gloves, let alone be seen hiking up his pants. The Inquisitor had had everyone fitted for uniforms before Halamshiral, but Halamshiral had been two years ago. 

The lighting was low. There were marble statues of the Forsythia ancestors in alcoves around the ballroom, ten feet tall, and watching over the room as he circled it with Miller. Nevarrans liked deep, cool colors, silver, copper; the Inquisition's red-and-gold was loud and glaring. 

Across the room, speaking to their hostess, Josephine had a smile affixed to her face. _The Forsythias are politically neutral_ , she'd said to Miller and Bull in the coach, on the way. _It's an incredibly difficult thing to manage, in Nevarra. Duchess Amalia is well connected with both those who support the Pentaghasts and those who would see them all burn, and her public support will open doors to the Inquisition that would have been closed if we'd declared for one side or the other._

"It is all about the _sea_ , hmm?" Miller was saying to a pair of noblemen, in a heavy Antivan accent, nursing a glass of whiskey she hadn't taken a single sip from. "In my beautiful land of Antiva, we know this. Inland, you are so concerned about your harvests! Your rents from your tenants! The weather, the rains. But invest in a fleet of fishing vessels, and you need only worry about collecting money. Why, I have been looking into one in Val Chevin, not so far from here, very high yield, but the buy-in is _quite_ high, you see—"

She'd introduced herself as Lady Calla Vittoria Vanini, personal aide and confidant to Ambassador Montilyet. The accent: perfect. The mannerisms, the expansive hand gestures: all perfect, and all of them ripped from Josephine at her most excited. The business pitch: a pile of crap, but Miller was pretty, and quick to laugh, and the two of them were buying what she what she was selling. Hook, line, and sinker, even.

When the men had to move on, after promising to meet her for dinner the next day, she stumbled as if she'd been drinking and jostled one of their shoulders, just enough to slip her hand into one of their pockets and remove something.

"Were you a grifter?" Bull asked, once they were out of earshot. An elven servant walked by and offered them drinks, though they both had glasses in hand; as she spoke, Miller put whatever she was holding into the woman's hand, under the tray. 

"Nothing so good. I thought I was. I tried to sell Sister Nightingale a nice piece of land in the Vimmarks, once," Miller said, back to Orlesian again, without so much as a stutter. "I was a Nevarran at the time. At the end of my speech, I thought I'd roped her, but the Nightingale, she laughed and said my accent needed work, and _I_ needed some polish. Then she hired me on the spot." 

"Smooth lift, too," he said. Whatever she'd taken out of the man's pocket, he hadn't seen it. "Nice handoff." 

Miller finally took a sip of whiskey, and, hey, maybe she wasn't as desperate for praise as he'd thought she was, because she looked him up and down with narrowed eyes for a second. "I was a much better pickpocket," she said. "The local Jennies have an interest in those two fools. Why? I cannot say. Perhaps they beat their servants. One of them will accuse the other of stealing this trinket, they will duel at dawn, and hopefully they will, ah, bump one another off in public. The Jennies will have it sold for good money through Cooper's fence. Her display of good faith. Perhaps they will stop trying to drop pies on the lady ambassador's head." 

Cooper had mentioned Scrivener's trouble with them, but it hadn't come up again. Bull had thought about sending off a bird to Sera to see what she knew about her Cumberland counterparts, but he didn't want to insult his hosts. "Is that what they've been up to?" he asked. 

"There have been six attempts, so far," Miller clarified, taking another, deeper sip. Wherever she was really from, the disdain in her voice was completely Orlesian. "Two fish, three fruit, one meat. Cooper did not wish me to tell you. If you noticed, we would not be doing our jobs, yes?"

Now Josephine had moved on from their hostess to conversation with a trio of grim-faced, grey-robed Mortalitasi. You didn't see Mortalitasi out in public, walking the streets. At best, you'd catch was a creepy shadow in a graveyard at sundown. But these, Josephine seemed friendly with, and after a brief talk, she followed one out into the night, onto a balcony. 

"Gotta run," Bull said, nodding at where Josephine had been, and Miller shrugged. 

Orlesian nobles would have stared at him, as he crossed the ballroom to get to her. One or two of them might even have pretended to faint at the _outrage_ of an _oxman_ thinking he had the right to shoulder pass them, while their fellows fluttered around and fanned them. From this bunch, all he got was a stony disregard, like he wasn't worthy of being in their presence. If there was anything Nevarrans were good at, and anything knowing Cass for so long hadn't prepared him for—it was _silences_. Censure. No wonder Cass had run as soon as she'd gotten the chance.

"—tomorrow, then," Josephine was saying to the woman, when Bull got to them. "At the tenth bell?" 

The Mortalitasi nodded, and bent down to kiss Josephine on the cheek, a few beats too long to be polite. Then, without so much as a glance in Bull's direction, she swept off of the balcony and back into the party. 

"As you can see, I haven't been murdered," Josephine said, pressing the backs of her hands to her cheeks. "Just a private word with an old friend." 

"I didn't know you had mage friends." 

"My job is to have friends everywhere," Josephine replied, and went to stand at the railing. Bull had no choice but to follow. The gardens stretched out below them wound their way around the grounds in a long, slow spiral, radiating outward from a black mausoleum. The white veins in the stone gleamed in the moonlight, and the thought of what was inside of it made Bull's stomach turn over. And those were just the tombs he could see—Fletcher, chatty when drunk, stumbling back with him and Cooper from a tavern the other night, swore up and down that Scrivener had told her about the crypts under the city, where the dead walked side-by-side with the mages who experimented on them. But that probably wasn't true. 

"She was attached to the Nevarran embassy when I was ambassador to Orlais, you see," Josephine was saying—babbling. "She's a Pentaghast, too. Twenty-third in line for the throne, if a mage could be in the line of succession. Quite useful." 

"I'll bet," Bull said, turning his gaze onto her, rather than the garden. 

"The Mortalitasi keep an eye on every magister who enters Nevarra." Now Josephine tugged her gloves up so they sat snugly around her fingers. "If they know anything the Inquisition doesn't know about Boreas, Renata will tell me." 

There was a laugh from the party—maybe the second Bull had heard all night. Orlesians were nasty, but at least they knew how to have _fun_. "At the tenth bell?" he asked. "You eat breakfast at sunup."

"Renata has always been a late riser," Josephine said, just casual enough to lay to rest any questions Bull might have had about that kiss. Finally, she turned her gaze on him. "Iron Bull. You're a mess. Turn around, let me fix your uniform."

"Lady Forsythia looked like a piece of work," he said, feeling her hands tug at the back of his uniform jacket, tuck it neatly into his sash. Assured, professional touches. Nothing weird about it. She'd picked a deeper perfume for tonight, leathery and cryptlike. 

"Maker, it's like your clothes are trying to escape your body," Josephine muttered. Her hands smoothed up his back, pushing the wrinkles out to the sides. It was the first time anyone had touched him in days that wasn't to toss aside their practice stick and wrestle him to the dirt, or get around him in the crowds. If she just gave him a little scratch, a little to the left—"Was it that obvious?" she asked.

To someone who'd had their eyes on her every second since they'd left Skyhold, sure. "You do this thing," Bull said. "You wrinkle your nose, raise your eyebrows for a second when you're trying to make a smile look real." She did that sometimes, when she was talking to Boreas. He hadn't even noticed that he'd noticed, until now. That was the problem with Ben-Hassrath training, after a while: you turned out your pockets and found a hundred details you'd tucked away for later.

"She wanted me to grovel for her favor." Josephine stepped around him and nodded approval at her work. "For introductions, for money. She would not have respected me if I had. I've sailed down narrower straits. Come," she said, "let's go back."

The next morning, Josephine spent an hour closeted with Miller, picking out her clothes. Bel sat at the breakfast table across from Bull, picking at a piece of toast.

"You look tired," Bull said, putting a scoop of eggs on her plate. She didn't, really. Templars were trained to give the impression of full alertness at all times. 

"Kept me up half the night, she did," Bel said, "talking about that party. Now the ambassador is asking her for advice? I'll never hear the end of it."

Scrivener had set Bel to tailing them at a distance, but she'd gotten better at blending into a crowd, even over the last few days. Josephine certainly didn't notice. The caffè they went to was at the southeast end of the city, where the docks fell off and became nice houses by the water for rich families, well away from the stink. Inside, the proprietor looked terrified at the sight of a real Mortalitasi sitting at one of his tables, in broad daylight, drinking from a tiny cup.

Renata Pentaghast put her hand on Josephine's knee and squeezed it twice during the meeting. Josephine laughed a few times, real laughs. He caught a few snatches of them reminiscing about Val Royeaux, but nothing juicy. Josephine's dress today was a pale pink, with skirts that foamed and swirled around her legs and sleeves that barely deserved the name. 

"Anything useful?" Bull asked, as they left. 

"Very little, as it turns out," Josephine said, as they left the caffè. "And their records are... extensive, to say the least. It's a bit of a mania, for the Mortalitasi. Boreas hasn't participated in an abnormal number of blood rites, he treats his slaves as well as one can treat a slave, and he isn't a pervert."

Bull grunted. The day was overcast, and there were storm clouds way out over the water. They wouldn't make it to land, but it was nice to dream. "Whatever 'pervert' means, when we're talking about 'Vints," he said. 

"It means that he doesn't deal in the flesh of children," Josephine replied flatly. 

"Damn," said Bull. "A real hero." 

She gave him a warning glance, as though he didn't watch her walk out of every one of her little meetings with Boreas looking like she wanted to scrub herself down with a brick. Then she walked ahead of him, leading him through the winding streets back to their inn. 

"Leave me," Josephine said, when they returned, dropping into her desk chair and taking up . Her voice softened, as she turned and added, "No—have the kitchens send up coffee, _then_ leave me. We have a few dwarves visiting us in two hours; I'll need you to attend, but your time is your own until then." 

Which was to say: the Carta was getting feisty about meeting the Inquisition's lyrium needs, and she needed him to stand over her shoulder menacingly, in place of Cullen or Leliana. Fletcher had taken up a post outside Josephine's door, so he headed down to the gardens, which the crew had taken over. It had been days, and he hadn't figured out how to stop Fletcher getting through his guard. Miller was a nasty little scrapper, like Sera, who hadn't had to spend a lot of time fighting guys with big swords face-to-face, and he was there to beat the crap out of her until she got the hang of it. 

He liked them. Every fourth word out of Cooper's mouth was a lie, and she talked even more shit than he did, but she got results. Scrivener didn't have a stick up his ass so much as he had an entire oak tree hanging out there, but he was an elf in command, so it made sense. If it was just him and Josephine here, he'd have lost his mind inside the week. 

_Your threshold for going off your chain is pretty low these days, huh,_ he thought, emerging into the courtyard to see Bel and Miller wrestling on the ground, kicking up a cloud of red dust, with Cooper cheering them on _. Used to be you could take anything_. 

"Afternoon," Cooper said by way of greeting, as he sidled up next to her, leaned against the inn’s stone wall in the shade. Cooper cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, " _Miller!_ Are you trying to put her in a leglock or see what color smalls she’s wearing?"

"Both," Bull said, after a minute of watching them writhe around. 

"Yeah, both," agreed Cooper. 

He settled back to watch the fight. Bel was a heavy hitter, formally trained, used to carrying a shield on her back, and all that armor to boot. But Miller was slippery as a fish, and quiet too—even with an elbow in her back, she didn’t make a single noise. Skinner fought the same way. She’d broken a nose and an arm once because of a bad shield blow, and the only sound he heard was the crack of her bones. Silence was a point of pride. 

It was the spitting image of the Chargers. House rule: you only needed three for a scrap. Two to fight, and an audience member, someone to let everyone know later how badly you got beat. 

Little silver rings glittered on Cooper's fingers. Decoration, definitely. Not for swinging a fist. "Haven’t seen you in a couple days," she said. "Is the ladyship running you all over Cumberland?"

"Yeah." A droplet of sweat ran down his back. Even in the shade, the sticky heat didn’t let up. "Thought the magister was our only guy, but he’s just the main event." 

She waved a hand. "Oh, you’ve been listening to Scrivener mutter away in his closet?" Not an inch of Cooper’s smile could be trusted; he liked her for it instantly. "He's working himself into the dirt, trying to keep track of all the new dance partners the ladyship's found herself."

Josephine had accepted invitations to a concert, a masque, no less than three plays, an auction of magical relics, and a private dinner at the duke of Cumberland's mansion. None of them had seen him since sunrise, and the only evidence he hadn't had apoplexy and died was the steady stream of agents going in and out of his office to get their orders. 

"Did Sister Nightingale promise him something good for taking on this job?" Bull asked. Gold went far, but Cumberland was one of the richest cities he’d ever been in. You could go to any bazaar, spit, and you’d hit ten easier jobs if money was all you wanted. 

"Who knows?" Cooper drawled. "Scriv's been with her a long time. Ten minutes of peace and quiet. A boat full of green silk. The hand of one of those merchant princes. He's perfect if you want a husband _and_ a clerk." 

Bull snorted. "The green silk would do it for him." 

"He's been with the Nightingale a long time," Cooper repeated, and shrugged. 

A heavy _thud_ from the sand as Bel pinned Miller for a solid ten seconds, sweat dripping off her forehead into the dirt. Then Miller snaked one of her long legs around her hips, and they were rolling again. 

"Legs over the head!" Cooper said, loud enough for the half the inn to hear. "What did Fletcher tell you? _Legs. Over. The head."_

They paid her no mind, not even to make a rude gesture. Just the sound of them throwing each other down in the dirt, and Cooper’s catcalls. He liked the noise. At Skyhold, or out with the Chargers, you couldn’t find quiet if you paid for it. Same as wandering around Seheron with his unit, or sitting in his berth on a dreadnought. Someone was always snoring, or coughing, or picking a fight, or farting, or trying to talk through a mouthful of bread crammed into their mouths. If you counted it up, Bull probably hadn’t had an hour to himself his whole life. 

He’d never thought about it much, until he left Skyhold’s gates with Josephine and barely a skeleton crew. 

"Besides, if something happens to the ladyship while she's here, we all know the Nightingale will cut Scriv's cock off personally, and the men's bathhouses of Cumberland will lose a true hero," Cooper went on. "Especially if she's out with Boreas when it happens."

 _That_ was interesting. "Boreas has a reputation?" Bull asked. 

She wrinkled her nose. "Don’t they all? Blood magic, abominations, baby eyelashes in the salt shakers." 

A clear opening. He weighed it. Other than little asides from her other meetings, or a comment here and there, Josephine never brought up Boreas or any of their conversations. The most he knew he’d read in the dossier, and even that was—logistical. Lists of investments, family trees, how he voted on things. How many yards of cloth he bought two summers ago when replacing all his bedlinens. 

Nothing to give him a hint of how much risk she took every time she sat across from him, and took polite sips of the wine he poured her. 

Not once. 

"What about him sets you off?" Bull asked. 

"He makes Bel tick like a clock, for one, and for a templar, she's easy on mages. 'We're all the Maker's beloved children,' and all that. Miller doesn’t mind him; he’s a job and she’s having fun. _I_ think he’s nasty, and I haven't even met the guy." 

"No arguments here." He shrugged. "Nice clothes only take you so far." 

Miller had Bel pinned, and Cooper leaned forward, squinting to see the action through the dust. "His aides won’t give anything to Fletcher, see." It was an off-hand comment, a casual observation.

He blinked. "What?" 

"When they bring invitations on his behalf, and whatnot—Stone and _shit_ , Miller, are you _blushing?_ " Bel threw her off with sheer force, with a roar that almost made Bull applaud. "Anyway," Cooper went on, "the invitations. They won’t give ‘em to Fletcher or Scrivener. They say it's by Boreas's orders. So Miller’s out there playing courier, or I am." 

The detail was—odd at best, but he stored it away, let it nag at him. 

"And the ladyship always looks tired after their little meetings." Cooper had produced a needle and was picking carefully at dirt under her nails, which were perfectly manicured, to begin with.

"Yeah." He could chart weariness like Grim could track wolf pawprints in the mud. How Josephine made the effort to smile, but it came just a second slower than it would before they met. Hair, curled and loose, fell from her updo, and she never bothered to fix it. 

And it took her longer to speak. They’d walk in step for a few moments, the sound of her skirts brushing sliding along the cobblestones. She’d take a breath, and then another. They were little inches of air, measured in time by her corset or whatever held her all together under her clothes. By now, he could tell what her underthings were by the length of her breath, how long she could carry it in her chest, how much effort it took to hold back a sigh. 

"Of course," Cooper added, "she never looks half as tired after anything else, does she?" 

Bull knew. It pricked at him. "You crack any interesting heads lately?" he asked, rather than think too hard on it.

"Fletch and I found a cell of Promisers who were planning to hold Lady Montilyet hostage until the Pentaghast Usurper gave herself up to their fiery judgment, or something." Cooper, who had no problem abusing the Inquisition's budget for the trip to get herself snacks, had ordered a platter of cute little cucumber sandwiches. The maid who brought them paused to watch Miller and Bel rolling around on top of each other.

"Don't look at me like that, Mill," Cooper yelled, "snacks are for _winners_." She turned back to Bull. 

"How about the Jennies?" Bull asked, taking one of the sandwiches. "Miller told me about the, uh, pies." 

"Fucking— _pies_ ," Cooper said, vehemently enough to startle the maid off. "Pies! So the people they wanted to kill each other killed each other, the necklace has gone to the fence, the money will be in all the right pockets by tomorrow, and Fletch can stop fighting people on rooftops. You ever see her collection of ears? I'm pretty sure she's doubled it on Jennies alone."

Bull would bet his last silver Fletcher did not have a collection of ears lying around, but you never knew, with her type. "You started this fight, didn't you," he said, gesturing at Bel and Miller.

"My venerable ancestors would piss gravel on me from the Stone if I passed up the opportunity to get a couple of girls rolling around in the dirt for my enjoyment," said Cooper. "Besides, they needed it. Nightingale says Miller 'has promise,' so I'm the one who's gotta keep Bel from murdering her while you're out flexing your tits with the ladyship." 

 

Before Bull could say he was out there doing a lot more than _flexing his tits_ , with a snarl, Bel slammed Miller to the ground, her forearm across Miller's throat. Miller struggled furiously for a few moments, but her heart wasn't in it. She tapped out, and Bel held her for a second longer than she needed to, then let go and rolled off her, to sit, panting in the dirt.

"Well!" Bel said, more cheerfully than Bull had heard her sound in days, "I suppose we're done. I'm going to have a wash." 

At the word 'wash,' Miller looked like she wanted to die. 

"You may have one sandwich," Cooper said to Miller, once Bel was gone, and held it out like she was the queen of Orzammar. "And if you're going to be a miserable puppy the rest of the day, I don't want to hear it. You're Orlesian, right? Go write a poem, or something. " 

Miller's immediate grimace told Bull she'd already written plenty of poetry. Sullenly, she took the sandwich, and wandered off to stare at a rosebush. 

At the end of his break, Bull made his way upstairs, just in time to meet the pair of dwarves who had come to meet Josephine. Carta negotiators, one with a boulder-blank face and another who smirked at him with a smile dotted with gold teeth. Either way, they looked entirely unimpressed and not remotely intimidated. Ever since the Arishok in Kirkwall went wild, Bull was sure every Carta thug read the pamphlet on how to take down a big guy. And it showed, in the way they sized him up. 

So he nodded to them and let himself back into their suite. Josephine stood at the mirror, six hairpins tucked between her lips while she managed her hair back into a sleek knot. She'd changed her clothes—this new dress was a pale goldenrod, trimmed with white lace. He hadn't see her wear the same one twice yet. 

"Hey," he said. 

She finished her hair, sliding each pin into her hair with a precise, fluid motion of her fingers. Like watching one of the Chargers draw a knife; years of practice made it unconscious. "Bull," she said, and turned to smile at him. "Would you—?" 

It wasn’t one of the smiles she saved for the nobles with their pockets full of gold, and it wasn’t the little genuine grin he got a glimpse of every once in awhile. Just dead center. It made him stop, and he forgot whatever response he’d been about to say. 

But she was gesturing to the back of the dress. The top finished with a thin, delicate little ribbon that begged for a bow. He nodded, and as he came to stand behind her, she spoke at a rapid clip: "It’s nothing out of the range of your ability, I assure you," she said. "Pay attention, but I wouldn’t stare down either of them." She’d want them to engage with her, not him. "And if I look up at you, nod. Maybe cross your arms." 

She liked asking him for help with her clothes—probably some part of her that wanted to make him feel more included, since all he’d done for most of the trip was march along after her gilded slippers and scratch himself. 

He used his forefingers and thumb to tie the knot. Easiest he’d ever done. He liked them, always had—in the bedroom, sure, and out. The puzzle kind tamassrans gave qunari kids, rigging knots for sails, if he could look up from his own feet long enough. Dwarves in Orzammar had special knots they’d made for hauling lyrium out of deep pits (long and fat, so they could grab something other than the blue crap). 

This little ribbon was nothing, but—it satisfied.

When he looked up, she watched him in the mirror. Maybe tracking the movements of his fingers, or taking count of how much taller he was, even as he leaned over her. He tugged the knot tight, and then let his hands fall to his sides. Her hair oil smelled like flowers—jasmine, something subtler underneath. 

Their eyes locked, for just about a breath, and then he exhaled. "No cracked skulls, no waving my dick around. Got it." 

Her lip curled in a pressed-down smile. "I’m sure they were suitably impressed by the antics below." She raised an eyebrow. "I must find more for our agents to do, if Miller and Ser Belinda have resorted to playing in the dirt." 

But there wasn’t any promise in it, just amusement, and by then the dwarves were knocking on the suite door. The next hour passed painlessly, with Bull trying to place the Carta tattoos on the hands of one dwarf while listening to a lengthy and dull negotiation on the Inquisition’s lyrium supply. When Josephine made a promise for better guards on their caravans, freeing up Carta agents and lessening their liability, she turned to Bull. He played his part—a nod, a grunt under his breath. Crossed his arms. She reached up and patted him once, almost reassuringly, with one soft hand against his elbow. Her face, of course, betrayed nothing but total seriousness. But her eyes crinkled a little—a private joke, an almost-smile, and Bull found he didn’t mind being in on it. Not at all. 

The Carta agreed to better prices, more Inquisition involvement, a half-dozen other new compromises, and Bull thought—maybe this wouldn’t be such a shitty way to spend a week or two after all. 

* 

"After much difficulty, the Lord Magister's arrangements for your dinner at the Sun Dome are made," said one of Boreas's many emissaries, a young person of indifferent gender. Their robes were always well-cut and dashing, and their staff was an elegant, twisting thing, _and_ they were the only one of Boreas's messengers and secretaries who would so much as look Fletcher in the eye. "He will expect you this evening." 

"Of course," said Josephine, and returned to browsing the stall she had been when they'd found her.

The Grand Market in Cumberland could swallow both the Summer and Winter Bazaars of Val Royeaux whole, with a bit of room left over for dessert. It made the one they’d walked through on their first day look like _a tick on a mule’s ass_ , Bull had decided. She had not had a chance to experience it without Boreas at her side, playing guide, introducing her to this merchant or that— _riding herd_ , Bull would say, trying his very best to hide his disdain, and failing. 

It was as he said, however, and Boreas was so _cloying_ about it. He was pleasant, even avuncular, and spoke passionately on the evils of the Venatori. He was genuinely kind to each and every servant they encountered, whether it be the cook spatchcocking their quail, or the boy trying to ply them with magical buttons that could take on the color of whatever cloth to which they were sewn. His patience never wavered, even when they were interrupted while deep in conversation. Either he was an actor of incredible talent, or truly kind, and neither were traits Josephine found particularly trustworthy. 

He did not seem the type suited for revolution. He was too well-kept, too comfortable, and did not seem to have enough to lose regardless of which way the tide of opinion turned. Their negotiations—no, they would not lend Master Solas to the Lucerni. Yes, an exchange of information on rifts might be provided, along with Leliana's contacts with the addled souls in the Mage's Collective, who, so far as Josephine understood it, were out there throwing themselves at rifts. The Inquisition's soldiers would not go into Tevinter, but would meet certain trade caravans at the Orlesian border, a concession that had taken Josephine several ravens with Cullen to secure. 

There was one other point, however, which Boreas introduced gradually, and so softly, in-between his other requests, that she might not have noticed him building his case— 

There needed to be Tevinters in the Inquisitor's inner circle. A personal advisor who could hold Lavellan's ear. Why, they had an Orlesian and a Free Marcher—both Fereldan-born, but Ferelden hardly signified in the games of nations—an Antivan, a Nevarran. 

Josephine’s refusal—gentle, with the perfect practice of many years—was only met with a smile, and a promise to find another way through. _You and I do not believe in limits_ , he told her. _Waste not, want not._

Always _you and I_. Always: he did not like her so much as he _was_ like her. A key distinction. That she was aware of it did not make it any less effective. Did she not lose her patience with servants, on occasion—did she not respond with unnecessary brusqueness to beggars on the street, when she was in a hurry? Was not Boreas's graciousness something to aspire to? 

It was a technique many players in Josephine’s past had tried, but Boreas was a true master. He could distract, with ease and at will, with thoughts of herself, instead of whatever he was doing at the moment. Worse was when she caught herself pondering her own behavior after their long meetings, walking in time with Bull back to the inn. She was better than that—she knew it. But when Boreas held up the mirror, more often than not she was distracted by the flash of light reflected in it. Like a cat. 

And then there was the way Boreas spoke of Bull. Only small remarks, here and there, subtle punctuation to their conversations. _I suspect your companion never tires of idling in the sun_. After their day at the Bazaar: _Do make your companion carry these purchases back to your inn, my dear, I won't have you strain yourself._ The front door of Duke Anaxas's residence was more than large enough for Bull to fit through, horns and all, but Boreas's little excursion had them enter through a side entrance, and Boreas pursed his lips as Bull ducked through it, like he was a particularly cumbersome piece of furniture.

The money, Josephine reminded herself, every time. Bull would not lose his temper, not when there was so much on the line. They stood on common ground, and besides, they’d made a deal. They’d honor it until the ship pushed off from the harbor with both of them on it, regardless of Lavellan’s intentions. It would have been useless, as well as the height of rudeness, to remind the Inquisitor, the Savior of Thedas, of how many deals she had unintentionally scuttled with her unique approach to diplomacy, and which Josephine had saved at the last moment. By now, it was something of a specialty.

The sheer number of places Boreas took her came close to straining her wardrobe, but not her patience. She ran through the jade-green silk, then the white, then the ivory-and-silver, slowly revealing the flesh she had kept hidden away at Skyhold. Her neck, first, then her wrists, then—in a pale yellow confection she'd hidden away for an age—her bare shoulders. The heat demanded it. She had been so long in the South that her skin was pale underneath her clothes; the first day she exposed her upper arms, they _burned_ , of all things, like Cullen too long in the sun. Bull caught her rubbing absently at the mild, unwelcome itch, and offered her his horn balm, which worked as well to soothe flesh. A not-unwelcome kindness. 

She could admit the circumstances that brought them here were less than pleasant. But she was surprised at how quickly they achieved an ease with one another. She caught herself watching him from the corner of her eye—at the care with which he shaved his face, at the flex of his muscles when he hefted her shopping bags. When a sheen of sweat accumulated on his nose and upper lip, he seemed oblivious to it, until Josephine very nearly beckoned him down to her level in order to wipe it off _for_ him.

It only took a day or two to become accustomed to one another’s spaces. Bull liked the chair she’d had brought up for him to their suite, and she never bade him move more than necessary. She led them down the widest of streets when they ventured outside the inn. No matter where they went, Bull endured the knocks of passerby, their shoes on his boots, ducking under his arms—but it seemed the least she could do, in this place where he scarcely fit, was give him room. 

Bull never questioned her, or tried to angle his authority in. It seemed he believed it, when on occasion he drawled _hey, you’re the boss._ There was the occasional raise of an eyebrow, an uncomfortable shifting from foot to foot, which might well have been an old injury, if she did not know better. Bull made no unnecessary movements. Never a twitch or a blink out of place. It had been eerie, when she'd first noticed it.

"You think Lady Vivienne would like this?" he said, in the market, holding up a tiny model of an astrarium, wrought entirely in glass. That Bull used the hand missing two fingers, holding the globe delicately in the remaining three, must have been a conscious choice, for the stall-keeper's eyes went wide and panicked at the sight of it. Only the enormous diamonds dangling from Josephine's ears kept the woman from protesting; clearly, Josephine was wealthy enough to replace whatever her clumsy oxman broke.

"I think she'd be very gracious when you presented it to her," Josephine replied, "but that you wouldn't know either way."

He cocked his head in agreement. Just enough so the tip of the horn wouldn’t disturb the linen canvas of the tent over the stall. "Maybe more Solas’ taste," he said. 

"Not enough dust," Josephine allowed, and Bull’s mouth twitched. "Lady Vivienne does live in the modern age." 

Bull set the astrarium down precisely in the spot he plucked it, and pulled his hand back to his side without a disturbance. The stall-keeper’s nostrils flared, and then she turned to another customer. 

She realized how closely she’d been watching him with the glass, and swallowed her own frustration. Of course—of course, he returned it to the counter without breaking it. Josephine did not expect any bit of the world to crumble when Bull chose to touch it. But the eyes—on him constantly, tracking his every move, no matter where they went, no matter how wide the berth—had trained Josephine to watch him too, as though she also waited for the inevitable shatter. 

"There are summer scarves," she said suddenly, pivoting away from the stall, "made from Rivaini silk, woven by mages here. She wears them frequently." Despite the fact that summer in Skyhold was near winter most places in the north, but Vivienne needed no excuse to be overdressed. "I know they’re sold here, somewhere." 

Bull shook his head. "It’s fine," he said, and that was all. 

He was being stubborn. It gladdened her, that she had become attuned to his moods. A determined Antivan could cut a swathe through the crowd as well as a Tal-Vashoth could. There had been a stall that sold carved wooden fish, then one that sold what purported to be Antivan-style curries, then—the scarves. 

"She's your dear friend, as well as mine," Josephine said, holding a purple scarf up to the light. "Go on." She would not insult him by offering to pay for his purchases. The Inquisition had lined his pockets as richly as it had lined hers. This shop-keep, at least, was too busy with her nose buried in an Antivan romance novel to take much notice of the two of them other than a sideways glance. It almost felt like privacy, not to witness another episode of constant gawking. 

Bull was slow to move; without thinking, she held out her hand, beckoning for his. She would not reach out and yank his wrist like the chattel he pretended to be in public. He glanced at the top of her head, and then at her palm, soft but for quill-calluses here and there on the skin, and gave her his hand. It settled, the back resting on her fingertips. 

His hand was bigger, this close, but lighter than she thought—the muscles in his shoulder flexed slightly. He only held it there, and did not give all the weight of his arm to bear. She draped the scarf over his palm. Threads of copper caught the sunlight and danced. 

Bull tensed. "That’s not—" he started, fixing his eye on the light. No doubt he remembered her tidbit earlier of where they were made. 

She said instantly, "Not magic. Made by magelings to teach focus, precision, hand work." She pursed her lips a little, thinking of Vivienne. "An antidote against laziness, and using their mana for frivolous things." 

A line between his eyebrows creased thoughtfully. "Huh. Subtle." It was obviously not what he had come to expect from the place. 

"They spin the wire thin as thread," Josephine said. She drew her fingertip along one of the copper lines in the scarf. It dipped and rose with the contours of his hand, over where the silk snagged on his calluses and up the hill of his wide palm. "At least, that’s what I always heard." 

"Or it’s dyed to shine." His hand had gone very still. 

Josephine took a step away, brushing imaginary dust from her skirts. "Either way," she said, "Lady Vivienne finds them lovely." 

Bull carefully folded the scarf back into its particular shape, placing it back on the table. Her heart sunk, but she merely glanced back to the path. She opened her mouth to suggest they return to their inn—

"This one," he said decidedly. He took another scarf from the stack, a deeper purple flicked with lines of silver. They wound jaggedly through the cloth, like bolts of lightning. "More her style." 

"Yes," said Josephine. She watched him lay gold coins within the shop-keep’s reach. "I agree." 

Back to the inn, then, to sleep through the very hottest part of the day. She handed her purchases to Bull—sugar candies for Leliana, and a silver paperweight for Cullen, which he would pretend to find frivolous, then display prominently on his desk anyway—and spotted Ser Belinda, following them through the crowd. 

Where Belinda was, Miller was not far behind. There had not been any repeats of their wrestling incident, which Josephine had watched from the window and enjoyed, very thoroughly. One of the unexpected pleasures of joining the Inquisition, aside from the fame, power, money, and service to a righteous cause, was the thorough and visual education on how fiercely her colleagues trained in fighting and defense. They practiced at all hours, in all states of dress, or lack thereof. (She admired them, yes, but only as one admired the muscular statues of Maferath at the gates of Val Royeaux. How could she not?) She had even seen Bull, once, grappling with Seeker Pentaghast in the practice ring. 

"Do you ever feel insulted by it?" she asked, before her reminisces could go too far, nodding at Ser Belinda. 

"I wouldn't expect anything less from Red," said Bull. "Just because I'm good doesn't mean I don't have any blind spots."

They walked back to the inn before long, so Josephine could properly prepare for her liaison with Boreas. She had become accustomed to their silences too—the way he sat and paged through his book while she worked at her desk in the morning, if he wasn’t out brawling with Leliana’s people. And this, the thoughtful quiet as they went down the path, was oddly comfortable. A lack of conversation never seemed to make Bull anxious. Josephine found it—a relief, if that was the proper word for it.

After a fitful nap in the heat and cool baths to wash the day’s sweat away, Bull emerged from ladling water over himself in his more sober pair of trousers. He stood in her doorway, watching Josephine struggle with her dress for the evening. It was an unremarkable purple, diaphanous enough to be comfortable, but not sheer enough to reveal anything of interest—until she moved, and her skirts caught the light, to reveal its shimmering deep blues. The fabric was a miracle, and therefore it was too, too dear to wear at Skyhold. Its halter neck left her arms bare, but for a single gold cuff on her wrist, which slid down as she fumbled with the clasp behind her head.

"Need some help?" he asked.

"If you would." She had struggled with the fastening for nigh on a minute—the modiste had fashioned a row of pearl buttons to keep the dress in place and to keep the wearer decent, and it was impossible to close any of them without help. 

He rescued the clasp from her fingers and bent low to see what he was doing. Only his knuckles brushed against the back of her neck. Even as the room steamed with the mid-afternoon sun, gooseflesh rippled from her nape, down her spine. There were no excuses for this, for asking him to help her with her dresses again and again, only that had it had been an unendingly long time since she found herself in a room, alone, with someone touching her with anything but the distant manner of a servant. 

"You'd do better with a ribbon back here," he said, after a considerate pause that felt like hours to Josephine. "A clasp. Something you could do yourself." Of course, she’d made him tie the ribbons too, hadn’t she? And clasp up the clasps. 

He moved infinitesimally closer—taking great pains, she realized, not to brush up against the flesh of her back that dress exposed in a draped window, not to press his knees against her wide skirts. He slid the first button into place.

"I do hope," she said, adjusting the pearl bracelet at her wrist, "that this isn't too onerous." 

His fingers slid along her skin as he moved up the row of buttons; it was not a caress. It was only that it was small and gentle, and not for her to confuse with tenderness. She wondered, nearly against her will, what would happen if his fingers grazed only a little above and threaded themselves into her hair, their weight along her scalp. 

"I've had harder jobs," Bull said. "But I'm pretty sure I've been in ambushes less dramatic than your dress." 

Despite herself, she smiled. "Oh, Bull," she said. "This does not even begin to touch drama." 

He chuckled low. His warm breath tickled the back of her neck. She wove her fingers together tightly in front of her, and did not picture the small smile that would be pinching at the corner of his mouth. He slid the last button home _._ He pulled his hands away, and she quickly put distance between them. His fingers were enormous, and should not rightly have been able to navigate the catches, but, then, he'd relieved endless women of dresses, and replaced them, too. The aides, the attaches, they would gossip. 

"Thank you," she said. 

The Sun Dome was visible from even the most distant parts of the city. Where other Circles had been sacked, or brought down to rubble, it stood, arrogant, presiding over Cumberland like a gold-clad matriarch, largely abandoned, but untouched by the ravages of war. Boreas had sent a coach to the inn to bring her, and its undercarriage sagged with Bull's weight, after he helped her in. The driver winced, visibly. 

"I hear your First Enchanter Vivienne is poised to take over the College of Enchanters," were the very first words out of Boreas's mouth, when she disembarked. She was forced to take his hand, his dry, soft hand—and, mercifully, he tucked it into the crook of his arm, to guide her into the building. Just as mercifully, he did not acknowledge Bull's presence.

"As the Circles no longer exist, I'm sure I couldn't comment on Circle politics," Josephine said, turning her mind to the task at hand. Her Worship, Inquisitor Lavellan, had no love of magic and did not even open the petition of the mages at Redcliffe. (Josephine had rescued it from the burn pile and pored over the text with Leliana in secret.) She instead journeyed to Therinfal Redoubt, made the Templars their full allies in the eyes of her gods and all Thedas, and promoted Ser Barris to the head of his order. Indeed, the two were inseparable when she returned at Skyhold—both outside her quarters and within. 

As for the mages, the Grand Enchanter and her followers at Redcliffe had disappeared into thin air, only to reappear at the head of the tide of fire that scorched Haven from the map. Or so she was told later—their forms were made behemoth and unrecognizable to any mortal eye. The memory of the night jarred her, made old scars ache, and she pushed it aside. 

Boreas smiled. "It exists in Montsimmard. That last bastion of Chantry loyalty."

"And here, I suppose," Josephine said. The entrance to the Sun Dome was high-ceilinged, with a blue-and-white tiled floor, immaculately clean. There was a pattern, but it was too vast for Josephine to comprehend from where she stood. A young mage in apprentice's robes rushed across it with an armful of books, late to some distant lesson; her footsteps echoed off the ceiling. "What interest," she said, "could you possibly have?"

"We care for the lot of our southern brothers and sisters," Boreas replied, simply. And with a Tevinter advisor at the Inquisitor's side, the concerned parties would be able to influence the formation of a new College. Yes. 

He moved through the halls with an easy familiarity. It occurred to Josephine _familiarity_ was too polite, too small a word. It was not that he knew the place, or had been here so many times he memorized the halls by rote—he moved the same way through the bazaar and overly fine taverns. Ownership. There was no place in this world that wasn’t his already, or couldn’t become his, with a snap of his fingers. Whether or not it was true was secondary; the confidence dragged around him like muggy air. 

Their conversation paused as he placed his hand upon a wide door trimmed in gold, laden in silvery runes wrought in a spiderweb script. They flared softly, and the door opened of its own accord. The chamber within was an enormous rotunda, mahogany bookshelves that fit snugly in every inch of available wall space. The smell of dust lingered, but not unpleasantly. As they stepped within, Boreas murmured, "Look up, dear girl." 

She tilted her head to examine the towering vault of the ceiling. There was no natural light in the room—to preserve the integrity of the books and their contents—but an inky darkness collected there in a wide pool. Floating in its depths were warm lights, no bigger than her palm, steadily glimmering. Within a few moments of her staring, they began to shift. Patterns readjusting themselves with the ease of a dreamer turning over in sleep. Constellations, she realized. She could not name any of them. But the sight took her breath away. 

Boreas gently cleared his throat; she looked to Bull, on instinct. He merely stared back at her. His words from their argument a few days past: _impress your sense of beauty, or whatever_ came singing back and she straightened her spine. 

"A wonder," she told Boreas. "Shall we proceed?" 

He guided her to an intimate table at the opposite side of the room; a chair was left for Bull by the door. Boreas pulled out her chair for her, and she surreptitiously glanced back. Bull had settled himself into the chair, which was just a hair too small. He displayed no discomfort, but seemed to relish cracking the spine of a book he’d plucked from the shelf. 

The meal was simple, and a gentle reminder of their first meeting together at the Lass. Tasting foods, meant to be sampled with the fingers—olives peppered with fresh herbs, this time, and a cloud-soft sheep’s milk cheese. Marinated peppers, tomatoes roasted in the sun, and cured beef heart, arranged in delicate little shavings around a pile of dates. The same white wine, even, sat on the table. He was not particularly subtle, this Boreas. 

"Another taste of home," Josephine said, running an affectionate finger through the condensation on the bottle. "A friend of the family had a Tevinter cook, when I was young."

"I can't imagine how ill you've been treated by Fereldan cuisine these past years. Now," Boreas said, "the First Enchanter." 

"I’m sure you’ll agree," began Josephine, delicately unfolding her napkin across her lap, "that of all the mages left in the south, she is best equipped to lead them into an uncertain future." 

Boreas raised an eyebrow just so, and poured wine for them both. "Uncertain for now," he said. "With your Inquisitor’s predilection for order, I imagine the reinstatement of Circles is a question of when, not if." Tactful, the way he placed the truth on the table as though it were another delicacy for them to sample. He shrugged. "It is the way things are done in your part of the world. We understand." 

Another _we_. Josephine was certain he included her in the widening loop. "And?" she invited. 

"The First Enchanter will take her place in this very building," Boreas said, "guiding her flock, as she and the Lady Morrigan guide the Inquisition." He plucked an olive from the bowl. The oil made it gleam dimly in the light before he popped it into his mouth, and savored it. "Mages without peer, I am told. But they are not Tevinters."

"And a Tevinter must have a place at the Inquisition's war table," she said. A week of dancing around the issue, and he had her back to the wall. It was time for Josephine to perform. "Inquisitor Lavellan's trust is hard-earned," she said, mulling the thought. The hesitation was important.

"You have her ear." It was not a question. "We, of course, have the gold."

"While the Venatori stream from Tevinter," Josephine said, "my Inquisition is saddled with the task of breaking their hold, with help from no one but ourselves." 

"And that is all we desire," he said smoothly. "To help. To invest in the cause that plagues you. And you cannot go alone." Josephine raised her eyebrow. "Let us send an advisor to counsel your Herald on how to eliminate them from the deserts, who understands their power and their motivations." 

Because they had not had success in the deserts, for their success at Adamant, and for all that Knight-Captain Rylen had dug his heels in at Griffin Wing Keep. Because the Herald had attempted to penetrate a Venatori stronghold in the area and been turned back twice, even with the Inquisition's might at her back. For her success at breaking the Red Templars in the Emprise, the Freemen in the Dales, bandits in Crestwood and some Avvar god in the Frostback Basin, the desert confounded and defeated them. If one wished to appeal to the Inquisitor's vanity, one could find worse places to start. 

_I want them to rot themselves out of the world like dead teeth._ Lavellan’s voice. The dust of the Hissing Wastes still clinging to her coat. _Or I’ll break them myself. They deserve no less._

"Should we agree to this particular term—" 

Boreas made an disapproving sound and poured himself more wine. "This is not a 'term,' dear girl. Terms are for our respective teams of solicitors to bloody one another over. This is a _condition_. Consider: your Inquisition collects all sorts and holds them close. The apostate. The wayward Templar order. Even the savage oxman. In all your armies, your spies, your diplomatic corps, you cannot take in a single Tevinter?"

Josephine let the silence rest. A condition, indeed. If she wrote to Lavellan that she'd accepted this on her behalf, the resultant explosion would make the Conclave look like a hiccup; but she could not let so much gold slip between her fingers. And what he had said— _the savage oxman._ She did not have to look at Bull to know how he sat, awkwardly reclining in his chair, his legs stretched out to their fullest extent, the book resting on his belly, small in his hands. She was certain he looked up every once in awhile to read their lips, to scan her face and the line of her posture. She was certain Boreas made no move unmarked by Bull's sharp eye. 

Boreas, on the other hand, had cast a long look at Bull near the beginning of the conversation, tinged with surprise, as though he had forgotten qunari could read, and found the revelation amusing.

There was some way to extract herself from this. There was always a way. "I suppose you have a candidate in mind," she said, at last, though she was certain of the answer. 

"A few," said Boreas. "Young Lord Pavus is already known to your Inquisitor, for one."

He was, and it had taken both Cullen and Barris to separate them, in their final fight. Josephine had had a long week of explaining to visitors why the Herald of Andraste's eye was blackened and her jaw, swollen; and Lord Dorian had been worse off. "Lady Vivienne says that his knowledge of spirit-summoning is unparalleled," Josephine replied. "Outside of our Mortalitasi hosts', that is." 

"An unusual specialty." Boreas gave her his most fond, disarming smile: an uncle, his niece. "As I hear that your Chasind is an expert in elven magics? It sounds very quaint. However, I had thought—I had dared hope—that as you and I have already built a rapport, I might put my name into the consideration."

Which was to say: _Name me your new arcane advisor, or you won't see a copper._

One wondered if Magister Tilani had approved this move, or if Boreas had simply seen his chance at advancement and taken it. The thought of facing him across the war table in the morning: Leliana and Cullen would loathe him on sight. Lavellan would never trust Josephine's judgment again. If Master Solas or Lady Vivienne didn't murder him before the month was out, it would be the greatest of the Inquisition's miracles. 

Or, worse! They would all adore him. Cullen would be wary, at first but find his suggestions on how to break the Venatori sensible. Boreas would never have Lavellan's good opinion, but if she did not spend enough time with him to see beneath his polished surface, he might just gain her respect, however grudging. Solas would find him a worthy sparring partner; Lady Vivienne would recognize his skill as a mage. Not even _Sera_ could be counted on to humiliate him, if he was as good Skyhold's servantry as he was to even the lowest beggar who crossed their path.

Caught between these two hideous outcomes, Josephine said, as calmly as she could, "And to think—we almost allied with the qunari." 

Boreas gave a small shrug. "Wise, to consider all options." 

"Truly?" asked Josephine, playing into it. "I find that a little surprising, considering how little love is lost between you." 

"The work of hundreds of years," he said. He waved a hand. "And you travel with a Tal-Vashoth now—good as allyship, if you trust him with your life." The way he said it made it an ugly thing, over-sweetened and slick. 

"Honest work for honest gold." It was all she could think of to say and be civil. The thought of facing him across the war table every day sickened her. "No more than anyone else wants or needs in the service of a cause." 

Boreas laughed, soft and gentle. At her perceived foolishness, perhaps. "Now, now. Make no excuses to me. You employ them for their skill, I’m sure. Their strength of arms. Their unmatched… vigor of purpose. But one doesn't _ally_ with such creatures." Her heart began to thud. Before she could reply, his mouth curled into a grin that presumed to know much, much indeed. He added, more softly, "Let a wild thing be wild, if it loves you enough to return. I’m certain, my lady, you know how to buckle a leash." 

The words dripped with kindness. He thought he was advising her. He meant it entirely in earnest. He was saving her, from an unwise dalliance, the follies of her _youth_ and _inexperience_. Josephine thought, _I must not let it show on my face. I must not let Bull see,_ and the thought kept her sane, made the bile slide down out of her throat. A sharp retort would gain her nothing. Anger rushed in its stead—she had known all along he made no secret of his prejudices, but here was her blatant proof. 

"I'm sure I'll think on it," Josephine said, and she took a bracing sip from her glass of wine. Boreas, mercifully, moved on to the subject of the foibles of the local Mortalitasi.

Anger made her prideful. She knew this, but she could not leave it so. Not when so much rested in her hands. Not when an opportunity opened like this. He thought he was the victor. He had pinned her in place with his demands, insulted her—Bull was not her _friend_ , but he was under her protection just as much as she was under his—and made endless insinuations without merit. She would not go back to Skyhold with matters as they stood now.

She thought of Bull, turning a delicate page with the pad of one of his enormous fingers. 

The idea bloomed, a perfect golden droplet, and Josephine folded her hands in her lap. She needed to stall for time—to write to Magister Tilani herself, for a start, and discover whether the condition was so ironclad as Boreas made it out to be. And she needed to show Boreas that walking into Skyhold as new arcane advisor would not be so simple as he thought it would.

"You're thinking, dear," Boreas said, after Josephine was silent for a moment. "Do share." 

"I was thinking of my Inquisitor," Josephine replied, gazing up at the lights on the ceiling. "She is a difficult woman at the best of times, and bears no love for your country. She _loathes_ Tevinters."

"So I've heard." It did not seem to bother him either way. 

"You will need to win her over."

"I'm sure I can." 

Josephine pursed her lips and frowned. "The Inquisition is my home. I cannot rightly sign my name to something that will bring discord into my house. I need assurance that you _can_ do it. A display of your talents." 

"I've won _you_ over, haven't I?" Boreas asked, leaning forward and lacing his fingers under his chin. 

She would not respond to that. She would not say something foolish. She would remain calm. She needed only a few days, enough time to get a raven to Qarinus and back. If Lady Magister Tilani herself struck the condition from their bargain, Boreas could do nothing.

"It's only a simple task, my lord: take luncheon with me at my inn," Josephine said, "and win over the Iron Bull." 

*

The lights from the ceiling dipped down to hover over him while he pretended to read. Whether that was what they were made for, or they just knew he'd need the light—shit, who cared. If Cumberland was pulsing with magic, this was building was the beating heart. He made his eye move back and forth over the treatise he'd picked out. Josephine was here to close the deal. It would be over. He could go back to Skyhold, which was as good as home. Maybe Lavellan would take him out into the field to get hit on her behalf, maybe Cullen would have a job for the Chargers. Real work, honest work.

One of the lights got too close to his page, and he brushed it away, gently. It wasn't even warm to the touch. Josephine, across the room, laughed at something the magister said; it might well have been an honest laugh, for all that he could tell. 

Then everything went south. Not immediately. Not visibly. But on their first day in the city, she'd turned her head up toward the sunlight with a small, catlike smile tilting up the corners of her lips, and he'd thought, before anything else, _There's the baseline._

He'd seen her happy over the years, and he'd seen her full of purpose, which was the next best thing, but never languid like that, like'd she'd melt if he touched put just one finger on her. He'd taken a second to memorize the line of her shoulders, the way her face looked when she was totally at peace—and even from across a room, Bull knew, with absolute certainty, that something was wrong, and she was furious.

She took him out to eat, afterward. 

"You must be starving," Josephine said, nonchalant. Still mad enough to spit, though. "I had Scrivener look for places _you_ might like to eat."

"Sounds good," he said. She was getting him alone, in a place where she thought he'd be comfortable. He scanned the street. Boreas hadn't had Josephine tailed even once since she'd come to the city, which worried Bull more than anything else—either Boreas trusted Josephine, which was unlikely, or whoever was following them was better than Bull's ability to make them, or he was using magic.

Josephine walked determinedly past Boreas's carriage, never mind that it'd take an hour to get back to their inn. Her little shoes would be shredded by the time they got back. None of Bull's business, unless he had to carry her. The night air was heavy and full, like the clouds were getting ready to burst—they wouldn't, but you could look up at the sky and hope. Lamplights, black and iron-wrought, stood sentinel every twenty paces on the street. No wick inside the lamp, no oil. Bull wondered if these too were only empty decoration until he spotted a mage in loose grey robes begin harrumphing his way from light to light, waving his hands and casting balls of blue and silver fire, glistening behind the clear panes. 

It was a solid twenty minute's walk to a little hole in the wall run by two Vashoth women. _There_ was something you didn't see everyday, in the south. He ordered for both of them: thick-cut noodles and beef in hot broth, just like he'd eat in a mess hall back on Seheron. When Josephine was focused on some problem, he'd learned, she ate like a baby bird, a bite here, a bite there, until hours had gone by and her body remembered it was starving.

She ate like that now, picking the meat out from around her noodles, staring determinedly at the wall past their table. Then she took a sip of her broth, raised her eyebrows in surprise, then pleasure, and drained the entire bowl. 

Josephine began, "This is…" and trailed off. 

"Yeah," Bull said, taking the her bowl out of her hands and adding the noodles to his own. She didn't protest. A little intimacy that they'd both forget about, when they got back to Skyhold. "When was the last time either of us had spicy food? Good pick." 

"What did you think of the Sun Dome?" she asked, and looked down at her empty bowl as though she wanted to lick the traces of hot pepper from the bottom of it. 

Bull shrugged. So she was going to be roundabout with whatever she wanted from him. That was fine, he could wait. "I think a 'Vint would feel right at home there. I think _he_ did."

"I do wonder if he had to bribe his way in," Josephine murmured, "or if he has a standing arrangement. I can't imagine anywhere in the city more… opulent." 

"Excessive, you mean."

"I'm hardly one to talk about excess," she said, indicating her dress. One of the women behind the counter was keeping a suspicious eye on Josephine, while she chopped something. It was nice, for once, to not be the one people were staring at like he was going to burn their house down. "I think this is the part where you remark on my wardrobe for the trip," Josephine went on, "as you've helped me into most of it."

Sure, he'd remark on it, if he was flirting with her. He'd say: tell me, Josie, how'd you get a piece of the night sky to come down and let you wear it? The way she'd shown him her entire bare back, the way she'd tilted her head down, when he'd clasped it up for her. She didn't even think twice about trusting him. The barely-perceptible hitch in her breath when he'd touched her skin, to see if it was soft as it looked. Just a little brush of his knuckles, careless and light enough that she could explain it away as an accident, if she wanted to. People didn't often let him stick around long enough to put their clothes _on._

"Lady Vivienne would say it needs more brocade," Bull said. "And that your jewelry didn’t make a statement."

"One could only hope to be as daring as her," Josephine replied. 

"You didn't bring me here to talk about clothes, though."

"No," said Josephine. "I didn't."

So he waited. None of her fury had faded, even with a real meal in her belly. She pressed a napkin to her lips and said, "Just one more meeting, I think, for our magister." 

Bull shrugged. "Sure," he said. "Not a problem." 

And it wasn’t. Nothing pressed him to rush back to Skyhold. He didn’t like this city, didn’t fit here, but a day more sharing quarters with Josephine wasn’t anything close to torture. 

"He needs some education on a few topics," she continued. "If he wants me to convince the Inquisitor to go against her nature, I need to know he’s… true." 

_True_. Strange choice of words. Bull furrowed his brow. "Okay," he said, patiently. "So—" 

"You." Josephine finally glanced up from the bowl to meet his gaze. "I will need you there." 

Bull narrowed his eye. "He wants you to go somewhere dangerous? Somewhere alone with him?" The tendons of his neck tightened. He searched her face—she didn't seem nervous, she seemed pissed. Maybe fear filled her with rage, not tension. Couldn't handle being intimidated. He knew that feeling better than his own hands.

Whatever it was, she'd need more sensible shoes. He could throw her over his shoulder like an overdressed sack of flour, but fighting a mage took both hands and all his focus, and she'd told him back on the boat that she wouldn't even carry the smallest knife. Not even if her life depended on it. All those ruffles, and she couldn't be convinced to sneak a butter-knife in her drawers. He could try, but there wasn't much point.

But he’d worked through worse conditions. On Seheron, once, he’d bitten a ‘Vint’s hand through to the bone. The blood had tingled on his tongue, the mana fizzling out. 

"Not precisely," said Josephine, after a long silence, and exhaled, long and slow. 

"We'll get Fletcher and Miller as backup." Bull thumbed his chin. Miller had weapons on her at all times, never mind the laws in Cumberland, and Fletcher didn't need one. "They can smuggle me a weapon if it gets rough. A fisherman's trident, something." A knife in his pocket wouldn't buy him ten seconds against one of the young Laetan mages that got shipped off to Seheron, let alone a full-grown magister, but ten seconds would be enough. 

Or maybe he could just drag her back to the ship. She'd forgive him. Scrivener could send along their crap. Bull never traveled with anything he couldn't lose. 

She laid both her hands on the table then, gently. " _Bull_ ," she said. "Come back." 

He blinked, the corner of his lip curling downwards. "I’m here." 

To her credit, she didn’t glance away when she said, "You, at a lunch. He wants to meet you." 

The thought crossed Bull’s mind for all of a moment before he snorted. "Nah." 

"It’s done," she told him, with a helpless gesture of her hands. "The plans are made. Just this one, last thing, and then we can return." 

She wasn’t kidding, and the laughter went cold in Bull’s mouth. "We can go now." 

Josephine shook her head. "It won’t be so hard. And there’s no better place to watch me than right at my side." 

He furrowed his brow again. "He doesn’t want to meet me," he said plainly. "He’s a ‘Vint. A magister." 

"I hadn't realized," she replied, a little sharp. It echoed from their argument a few nights before.

"Magisters don’t dine with Tal-Vashoth." His tone went flat. "It’s like the Empress of Orlais wanting a conversation with her chamberpot." Josephine raised her eyebrow. "Come on. You get this. It’s fucking around below his station. Word gets back to Tevinter he’s breaking bread with me, he’s finished." 

"Either way," Josephine said, implacable, "you must come." 

It was unlike her not to wheedle even a little, for her to serve ultimatums without the usual smile. Even when she steered them through a new route through the crowded streets, it was accompanied by _please_. 

She was bracing herself, a new tactic for her. And it was—handling. 

Bull realized it, set his jaw, and said, "You're the one who wanted it." 

Her eyebrows arched. "I didn’t say—"

"He’s a ‘Vint, Josie." He ran a hand over his face. "He said something, right? Probably a whole lot of bullshit. It doesn’t matter. Let it go." 

"Of course it matters." Finally, a fleck of truth. 

"Great." Bull waved his hand. "I appreciate the gesture. I’m _touched_. But I’m not getting paraded in front of a magister like a prize ox." 

"It’s not parading," said Josephine, with sudden confidence. "It’s no secret this place has been abominable to you." 

"Why do you care now?" Bull asked, plain as he could. "Yeah, Cumberland’s not big on Tal-Vashoth. Not exactly a secret. It’s been like that since we landed." He scratched at a spot on his arm. "But now the ambassador has to take a stand. Brave. Huh." 

The words met their mark soundly as arrows; Josephine pursed her lips and ignored them all. She said instead, "You are just as much a part of the Inquisition as I am, and you deserve a seat at the table." 

"I decide that," Bull said. "Not you." 

A flash in her eyes. Very few people ever told Josephine Montilyet _no._ Or plenty of people did, and she only grew better at disguising the thorn in her side. Bull had done it more than once since their ship docked at the harbor. Each time, he watched her press her disappointment into a deep place where he couldn’t see. 

"They will withdraw their support," she said, "unless you attend. The point is to—" 

"What?" A knot twisted in Bull’s stomach. "Who set up that ultimatum?" 

"Negotiations, Bull." She folded her hands in her lap. "It hardly matters who introduces an idea, only that both sides come out satisfied at the end. You were a brief topic of conversation, and he would like to meet you. It’s that simple." 

He stared at her. He'd seen her lie a hundred times, and she was lying right now. She continued: "You are more than capable of holding your own with Boreas. I don’t see a single reason why not. One more meeting, and then this is over. " 

"The point of this," Bull said, "was to get help to wipe out the Venatori. It doesn’t have anything to do with me." 

"On the contrary," Josephine corrected him, "you and the magister share a common goal. I imagine you will have much to discuss." 

"Yeah." Bull’s nostrils flared. "You’re really not above this?" She tilted her head; he watched her fingers clench the fabric of her dress in her lap. "Screwing up the deal to prove a point?" 

"It will be fine." Her voice remained even and smooth. "An hour or two, and we will leave with their full support and enough gold to handily eliminate the threat." 

"You want them eating out of your hands." 

"I want them eating out of _your_ hands," said Josephine, and he shook his head. 

"No," he told her again, and sighed. She paused, waiting for him to speak. Not caring how unfair it was, he said, "I’m—if he could loop you into this, what other hoops are we gonna dive through for them?" 

"Oh?" Josephine said, eyes glittering. "You haven’t asked. We’ve been here for a week; the negotiations aren’t exactly a secret. A quiet meal is hardly on par with letting him—letting him bend me over a table for a bit of coin. Why do you care _now_? Because you can no longer pretend you're removed from the situation?"

The unpleasant jolt in his gut wasn’t from the scratch of the peppers in his belly. Sure, she had him there. He'd thrown his lot in with the Inquisition years ago; this was his superior officer he was talking to. More than that, it was her signature on the Chargers' bank drafts. Whatever spilled out of his brain didn’t matter much. Not even when he’d been Ben-Hassrath. He was hired help, through and through. 

That she managed to make him forget it most of the time was just another reason to watch his back. Stupid, to forget it. 

She’d tried her best to keep them on equal footing, more or less, for most of the trip. He took his time to answer her. Let the silence linger long enough to be uncomfortable. 

"Guess not." Bull took a sip of his broth.

"I don't like him either, Bull," she went on. She liked to make a case for the better. Wanted to convince him they were partners in it. "He's cloying. He's condescending. And it's ridiculous, but... I find his hands repulsive. I hate to touch them. I'm sure he'll be horrendously rude to you the entire time, and it's cruel of me to ask this of you—I wouldn't, if I thought I could close the deal without it. If I could see _any_ way around it."

"Sure." 

"And, look." Josephine reached across the table to touch him—her last resort, when someone was being difficult. It took her entire hand to wrap around two of his fingers. "You've been taciturn, and goaded me into laying my entire argument out. I could order you to do come along, but..."

It wasn't a threat. She'd do it, if he pushed her. "But you'd rather get me to come around on my own."

"For my pride's sake, if nothing else." There, now she had a little smile on her face. When rhetoric didn't work, re-establish a rapport. 

He was sorely tempted to make her do it. To see what it was like when Josephine turned an order and made it law. But she didn’t. She squeezed his fingers gently, almost like a reflex. Stroked her thumb over one of his knuckles. "I was on the lake," she said, her voice different now. Quieter. "At Haven, when the Venatori hit. That dragon, spewing fire. The workers asked me to inspect one of the new watchtowers. The foreman pointed out the fortifications in the rafters, and then it disappeared in flame." 

The fingers on her other hand fluttered. "There," she said, "and gone." 

He couldn’t tell the difference for the life of him—if this sudden vulnerability was to pull him back in, or if it was as earnest as she usually pretended to be. The first one. Shit, she’d have died, if she was that close to the front line. He couldn't remember hearing of her getting bandages changed, but everything had been a mess, up there on the mountainside. He couldn't even remember a limp. 

"So?" he said, unmoving. So she'd gotten burned. So someone had pulled her ass out just in time. It was a war, people got hurt. He didn’t need any more excuses to speculate about what was under the fabric of her dress, her cotton nightgowns, the silk of her sleeves.

"They ought to pay," said Josephine, "for what they’ve done. This is the way. We do need their gold, and, Bull"—she let him go, suddenly, her brow knitted in a deep line—"they want to install one of their own as an advisor on our war council. It's _not_ negotiable. Without a doubt, it will be a spy. You will remember what happened the last time we let a Tevinter near the Inquisitor for any significant amount of time. She won't take well to being forced to endure another."

"And this is, what, a test run? If you can get a magister and a Tal-Vashoth to eat dinner without killing each other, you can pull this off with the boss?" Lavellan. Great archer, great fighter, acted the leader when someone on Josephine's staff fed her an inspirational speech to deliver, but she didn't grit her teeth and bear anything for a second longer than her temper held out. 

"I need to stall, in order to get word to Magister Tilani." Josephine sighed. "And Lord Boreas _does_ want to meet you."

"That's not a no." 

"Two birds, one stone." She waved a hand. "Surely this isn’t a foreign concept." 

Bull eyed her warily. "Works out well for you." 

"It is what I do," said Josephine, and huffed out a frustrated sigh. She raked her fingers through her hair, and the whole mess of it fell down around her shoulders. The sight tugged at him. It wasn’t like her to make a show of exhaustion. In fact, seemed more important now than ever that she keep that under wraps. But either she didn’t know it, or didn’t care. And despite himself, he stared. 

But she hadn’t noticed. "I find the small weaknesses, the cracks between people, and I make them better. You want me to apologize for trying to broker peace between parties who cannot stand each other? Who, united, will accomplish something tremendous?" 

"No," Bull said, finding his tongue. "Just leave me out of it. It’s simple." 

"I can’t." And that was simple, too. Simple enough to be true. She folded her arms across her chest. "You’ve been a part of this since the beginning. Since we walked into the city. Since Boreas decided to insult you at every opportunity. Since Lavellan made you board that ship with me, and guard me, for reasons neither of us could dictate. You’re part of the deal." 

Bull opened his mouth, but she held up a hand again. "These aren’t the terms I would have chosen," she said—which wasn't true either, he was sure as the sun she conjured this dinner mess—and met his eyes. "They’re not, whatever you might think. But there’s no sense in letting work go to waste. All the possibility, everything we could do—to throw it away over something this small—would be a crime of war itself." 

Bull went tight-lipped. It was an unimaginable amount of money, and losing it would be a disaster. He knew it. And putting up with an hour of being on display was a little thing next to all the cash on offer. The future glowed bright and too hot to mark the price. But he wouldn't agree. He’d do what she wanted, resign himself to whatever she'd deemed inevitable, but she won’t get anything close to a nod. 

"What you know about that," Bull said, "probably wouldn’t fill this bowl." 

"I know," Josephine conceded, with the weary countenance of a gem monger securing her last sale, "but will we sail back to Skyhold with something to show for it, or nothing at all?" 

*

Scrivener took the news far better than Josephine thought he would, and with a bare minimum of wailing and gnashing of teeth, before he decided on the luncheon's security arrangements: the public tearoom on the first floor would be filled up with Scrivener's people, ones Josephine had not seen yet. The inn had a private sitting room for such events; Ser Belinda would be stationed nearest the door, ready to silence Boreas, at their signal. 

The raven would have reached Qarinus a day and a half ago. Hopefully, Magister Tilani would override Boreas's _condition_. 

"It's a bit… yellow," Miller said, peering into the sitting room over Josephine's shoulder. She _very_ much wanted Josephine's commendation, and had gladly taken Bull's place as her constant shadow. She was profoundly chatty. Ser Belinda would be grateful for the reprieve, at least. "Dreadful color for a room. Begging your indulgent pardon, but I wouldn't wear the orange silk." 

"The lavender," Josephine agreed, and waved Miller off. The room's color didn't matter. It was airy enough that Bull would not feel awkward in the space. She did not care one whit for Boreas's comfort, but every small consideration mattered with Bull, these past few days. 

In the meantime, she had to share a room with Bull, and he had not withdrawn his conversation, no. He wasn't a spiteful man. Neither did he pretend to be happy about their coming appointment. 

He stopped beginning conversations. Kept to himself. Only offered orders on how to arrange the guard as was necessary for her protection. In all other matters, he left the machinations up to her. He simply held no desire to argue. She had lost the privilege of discussion with him. 

Perhaps this was how Bull licked his wounds. It was hard to imagine anything penetrating his goodwilled exterior, his compulsion to put others at ease. She had lost that too. 

But that was only a part of it, she thought, mounting the stairs to her room, Miller following at a polite distance. Cooper and Fletcher had borrowed Bull for the day, for what Cooper diplomatically described as 'a real big job.'

He had stopped watching her. If pressed, she couldn’t articulate how she knew, only that it was true. Since they landed, his gaze had settled on her like a comfortable piece of armor. His watchful eye marked her every step, whether it was in their quarters or out on the street. She grew accustomed to it. It bore a physical weight on her, as though one of those heavy hands, so careful with whatever tender thing it touched, never left its vigil at her back. 

She wasn’t—unsafe. He did his due diligence; her safety came above all else. But he had pulled himself out of her presence, refused his place in her orbit. She did not know how welcome that weight was until it disappeared. She had not realized how much she enjoyed his company, how easy and restful his presence was, until she ordered him to do as she wanted. Now it was gone, and a soreness occupied its place, blistered by the separation. 

Josephine had thought before that their arrangement was business at its purest, its most simple. A compromise of wills and personalities, no different from any overbearing bodyguard she'd been assigned in the past. But _this_ was business. And it left her cold. 

So she allowed him his roomful of agents outside the door, and did not argue that the situation was unlikely to turn dangerous. If it seemed more like an ambush than simple security arrangements, let him do what he must. She had done this to herself, after all. And it _would_ go well. Both sides, perhaps, would learn something from the exchange. Once it was finished, the space between herself and Bull would lessen. Over time, he would understand, and perhaps it would disappear all together. 

Hope was too frail a word for it. Josephine knew it would happen. She would accept no less. Where she was not loved, she made herself loved. It was that simple.

When Boreas came, in his accustomed white, he came with his two elderly servants in tow, who took one of the tables Bull had left for them. He did not ever, and had not ever, had the decency to sweat, and the room became noticeably cooler when he entered it. Another one of his endless supply of little kindnesses. 

"Let's get this over with, shall we?" she murmured to Bull, and handled the greetings. Boreas held his hand out for Bull to shake, which Bull did, without hesitation; once that hurdle was passed, the way was smoothed. 

It was, in all, even more civil than she might have hoped. The strange _emptiness_ in Boreas's manner was nothing new, where Bull was concerned. The innkeeper's handsome son served them a tray of teacakes—lemon, of course—while they waited for their bowls of stew, and Josephine made inane conversation. _Look,_ her glance to Bull said, _he's dreadful, but not so dreadful as to warrant a templar outside the door._

"They say the qunari are a thinking people," Boreas said, once their food came, tucking his napkin into his lap, as though he needed it. In all her time dining with him, she had not seen him get so much as a fleck of food on his fine linens and silks. "Tell me, when the lady ambassador and I dined at the Sun Dome, what were you reading?"

"I'm Tal-Vashoth," Bull replied, with a flat blink. 

There was a retort on the tip of his tongue. Josephine could as good as hear it, for all that she knew—she had to have faith—that Bull would not throw the proverbial first punch. "An understandable mistake," she cut in, regardless. 

"It was an herbalist's compendium," Bull said. He picked up his spoon and stirred his soup. "Not the Arancia one, we've got six copies of that at Skyhold." 

"The library of the Sun Dome is not as vast as some," Boreas continued, as though nothing had gone awry, "but nearly all the tomes within are one-of-a-kind." He chewed some beef from his meal, looking thoughtful. "An admirable hobby." 

Bull only tilted his head as he pushed some gristle to the side of his bowl. Josephine thought of perhaps defending what lay beneath— _Bull reads frequently_ , she wanted to say, but realized before it left her mouth that they would be worse for the articulating of it. 

But Boreas smiled—that small, presumptuous curve. "To heal scars, instead of make them. Good work." He touched the meaningless napkin to his lips. "Meaningful, perhaps. Fulfilling." _Penitent_ , Josephine heard. She remembered to take a bite of her food, and after swallowing opened her mouth to direct the conversation once more, but Boreas had a curious look. "How long since you left the Qun?" he inquired, casting a cursory glance over him. Almost an excavation.

"Long enough." Bull shrugged. "Been a while." 

Boreas found his wine glass and took a polite sip. "And what do you make of the free world?" 

There was a pause before Bull let loose one laugh, a huff of amusement. Josephine opened her mouth again to speak, but Bull arrived first. "Which one?" he asked. 

The corners of Boreas’ eyes crinkled warmly. He took the liberty of refilling each of their glasses of water; under his touch, the crystal pitcher fogged with cold. "One type of bondage," he said, "is not so different from the other. The only difference is what those on either side of the border call it."

"Not the first time I've heard that one from a 'Vint," said Bull. He took a long sip from his glass, then set it down more forcefully than Josephine thought strictly necessary. "Won't be the last."

And Boreas watched its course with more interest than a simple cup warranted. It was the first aggressive move Bull had made the entire evening: of course he would be interested. He thought of Bull as nothing more than Josephine's little experiment, at best. "Oh? Have you made the intimate acquaintance of many Tevinters in the past?" 

"Sure. My lieutenant is from Minrathous." Bull stared directly into Boreas's eyes. Josephine, who had heard _this_ particular story, readied herself. "My right hand man. Best soldier I've ever met. His father sold himself into slavery after a magister put him out of business." 

"How regrettable," said Boreas. "If you'd give me the man's name, perhaps I could be of some help in locating his sire. They say the Bull's Chargers are a prosperous company, after all."

"Why, that's a very generous offer, Lord Boreas," Josephine said, relieved to find an opening in the dialogue between them. They were getting too far from the point of the luncheon altogether, which was civilized conversation.

"Nah," Bull said, sitting back in his chair. "He can seek him out if he wants." He considered a thought for a moment. _Don’t take the bait_ , Josephine thought, just as he said, "You've heard of the Chargers?" 

"Of course. You’re part of the Inquisition," Boreas reminded him with a swoop of his hand. "You did well, I hear, in Orlais. Enough gold to buy a chateau. Enough gold to _fill_ a chateau." 

That was a mistake—Bull couldn’t be won with flattery. He shrugged, and said, "Well enough. Walk ten feet out of Val Royeaux and you’ve got lazy nobles by the pound." They only occupied a few of the stories, of course. Josephine had heard Krem regale the tavern patrons about giants, varghests, wyverns, scores of bandits led by queens. 

"Orlesians," said Boreas, plucking another piece of beef from his stew, "always have the most diverse taste." The way he landed on _diverse_ made the hairs on the back of Josephine’s neck stand up, and then he nodded to her. "Eclectic. Wouldn’t you agree, Ambassador?" 

"In what, exactly?" Josephine asked, toying with a lemon cake and not letting her gaze stray to Bull. It seemed Boreas had picked up on their rudeness in leaving her out of the conversation. 

"You lived there for ages, did you not?" Boreas’ eyebrows raised high. "We have a particular phrase for them in Tevene—the plumed stork of the south. Our odd little bird." A reference to the masks, no doubt. His voice took on a pitying tone. "Celene and her companion—all the doors are open now, aren’t they?" 

Josephine took a sip of water. She felt Bull’s eye boring into the side of her head, the first time he’d looked at her in days. And she was caught, between what she would have said to appease Boreas in private, and what she could bring herself to say in front of Bull. 

"Briala is well loved," she told Boreas. 

"Quite. And now anyone may walk into the Imperial Palace." He _tsk_ ed under his breath. "I visited once—splendid, if a bit pale for Tevinter tastes. All that white and gold. It must be impossible to keep the place clean, these days." 

"You're very well-informed," Josephine said. She finally took a bite of her lemon cake. Before she could redirect the conversation, Boreas turned to Bull, all snide comments about elves forgotten. Had Bull visited the herbarium at the White Spire? (He hadn't.) Thousands of samples from all corners of Thedas, preserved flawlessly. The Fereldan Circle's greenhouse—a miracle, if a bit rustic—so many plants, so little space. Bull, reluctantly, spoke of his company's brief time on the lone mountain outside of Kirkwall, and the breed of elfroot that grew only there. Josephine stopped trying to insert herself. It was almost pleasant, after a week—a year— _four_ years—of the world hinging on her, to be utterly irrelevant for an hour of her day.

Once it was over, and Boreas had departed in a swirl of white, his silent servants in tow, Josephine chanced a look at Bull. He had not eaten breakfast that morning, and he had hardly touched his food. Not the stew, not the cakes. Very well: breaking bread the enemy would make anyone queasy, but Josephine could not feel guilty when it had gone off largely without a hitch. Now she could begin to make amends for using him so. 

"Iron Bull," she said, and took a hesitant step toward him. She had asked him to do something difficult. There was, of course, the possibility that it had even been wrong of her—but she would not require a subordinate to shoulder any burden she would not shoulder herself. Bull pinched the bridge of his nose with his three-fingered hand, elbow resting on the table. She had seen him half-asleep on his feet, but she had never seen him look this tired. It was her fault, of course, but he would understand. He _would_ understand. 

"I hope that worked to stall him," Bull said. 

His tone stopped her in her tracks. They’d argued, discussed, even snapped at one another. He spoke quietly. But the brittle hardness in his voice struck her, now, the sound of a taut arm being cocked back for the swing. And a certainty. A blow that would not miss. 

"He was far less horrible than usual," Josephine attempted. "More civil than I thought he would be."

His eye was still closed. "You know, Josie, I've killed a lot of 'Vints," he said. 

"Yes, I'm aware," Josie began, but the grim look he gave her stopped her speaking.

"Most of them were soldiers who thought they were doing the right thing. We're all educated under the Qun. We read the texts, we read the commentaries on the texts, we think for ourselves. We say, where there's two qunari, there's three opinions." He leaned back, deceptively casual. Josephine stood very still, caught and held in his gaze. "And you fight these people long enough, maybe you get to thinking, that guy with the snake on his shield, maybe he's not _bas_ , maybe he's not _kabethari,_ maybehe's just like me. A person, like me. Maybe one in every twenty, every hundred, you hesitate. Let somebody off with broken kneecaps. Cut off a hand instead of a head. They'll never fight again, but they'll survive. You sleep a little better that night." 

She opened her mouth to stop this line of argument, to halt him with her opinion, but Bull's hands trembled. The tiny vulnerability left her still. He exhaled, and his breath rattled out of his throat like an old man’s. 

"If I ever see your magister again," Bull said, at last, "I'm not going to hesitate." 

Even Bull’s state couldn’t stop her mouth for long. "He was civil enough," she argued, but gently. A polite reminder. "Return the favor, Bull. You’re a better man than him." 

He stood, suddenly, and tried to stride past Josephine, but she caught his hand, as though her strength was sufficient to hold him. Her fingers caught two of his. He drew in a sharp breath and pulled away, as though she’d channeled lightning from her palm to his spine. Quick and sharp, and then he was at the door. 

"I need some air," Bull said. He breathed, the hand she held clenched into a fist at his side. Not in threat—he had the look of someone riding an invisible tide. Of what, she didn’t know. 

"Bull," she said, and then he turned the latch and disappeared through the door. It slammed shut behind him. All the servants had cleared away their plates; Scrivener's people sat outside at their posts, waiting for the all-clear. 

For the first time since landing at Cumberland’s docks, Josephine was alone. 


	3. A Hand on the Dial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A search party. Josephine fails to make amends. Bull is very, _very_ tired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Word to the wise: this chapter is when some of our fic tags (sex pollen, non-consensual aphrodisiac use) come into play. While all the sex is consensual, some of the circumstances aren't. Just FYI.

The first thing they told you on the boat to Seheron was: never let the Tevinters take you alive. If you did manage to get taken alive, escape as soon as you could. If you couldn't escape, you needed to find some way to get yourself dead as fast as possible, because there was nothing the scary magisters down south wanted more than living test subjects. 

There was speculation about what, exactly, they'd do with _living test subjects_. Hissrad had access to every detail he could possibly want. A live qunari was more than a test subject, the reports said. It was a curiosity, it was a commodity. Women were worth even more, for their rarity. Blood magic, sedatives, taking out part of the brain through the nose, all those things could keep a captive from killing themselves. 

He'd heard the stories, most of them from old friends. Made a habit in his last year on Par Vollen of sticking around a tamrassan they called Taarlok—a Seheron-born surgeon with a face untouched by scars. Eyes green as seagrass. He was pretty sure she was Ben-Hassrath, deep in the kind of cover he still wasn't authorized to know about. After all, somebody had to watch the watchers. But she was thorough, loath to chop off an arm, and stupidly short for a qunari. Wicked with a _saartoh nehrappan._ Hissrad liked her. 

Really, what mattered is she made the habit, time and again, to indulge him. (Something about Vivienne made him think of Taarlok—even in wartime, they both pressed their clothes in flowers, but only certain ones. Taarlok favored white primrose and hibiscus. The scent lingered when you stood downwind.) They played chess together, somtimes, and after a session or two of her beating him to a pulp, she'd talk about the things she'd seen on Seheron. It was how you could tell she was back from only her first tour of duty. She still had the breath to talk about it. 

During one of their more cutthroat games, as she chased his _arishok_ around the board and captured three pawns in the process, he asked what was the most blood-curdling thing she'd heard about in the jungles. Word had just come back about 'Vints scalding qunari alive with liquid fire. His imagination wouldn't leave him alone on that one. 

Taarlok went quiet, but he couldn't tell if it was from focus or forethought. Her face was implacable as diamond, and not even the smallest twitch of her mouth was unplanned. 

_I heard rumors,_ she said, after Bull snagged one of her Ben-Hassrath, _about something the magisters like to do. When they want a show._

He grunted, glancing at her face. She looked down her straight, unbroken nose onto the board, and went on. _It doesn't have a name, as far as I know. They haven't used it in a century. It's not polite warfare._

 _Huh. Just for pleasure, then,_ he mulled aloud. 

Taarlok touched a Tamassran with just a fingertip. Her whole body was still. _You could say that._

It drove a qunari—or whoever had the bad luck to gulp it down—into total madness, the kind that grabbed your dick and made you hump everything that moved. No control. Taarlok never described it as _desire_. Just need, with no way out till it passed. Most people didn't have the presence of mind to figure out how to kill themselves while they were trying to fuck a hole into the wall. 

Then, it was just another bit of 'Vint fuckery. A myth. He'd huffed and said, _Rough. Drink enough poison, and your brains leak out through your dick._

Taarlok took his _arishok. Only if you're lucky, Hissrad._

Sure. An evening's entertainment, then. The _bas_ got to stare at the savage oxman who couldn't control his base urges, maybe throw a slave or two in there with him for a laugh. Elves, humans. 

Or an Antivan you wanted to teach a lesson about trusting Tal-Vashoth.

The sudden chill of the evening sky sent razor-tipped tendrils rippling under his skin as he shouldered his way out the door. A squirming, endless static made him inhale hard through his nose and he turned suddenly down a quieter alleyway. The streets were too crowded for this crap. Too many people bumping into him.

Vivienne and her poisons. Taarlok faded, and she appeared. You had to _account_ for the elements, when crafting a poison. You could dip an arrow or a blade in venom, but you couldn't just drip it into someone's cup, not if you didn't want them to spit it out immediately. Sacrifices, then—potency, stealth, and aesthetics. Poison should make a statement. _Two categories, Iron Bull._ Vivienne was sitting her chair, carved from white oak. Sun pooled at her feet in supplication. A book open in her hand. He'd looked up from the herbal compendium she'd set him to reading. Orchids, maybe, on the air. _Immediate and intense,_ she said, _or long and slow._

 _Either one sounds good to me,_ he said, and grinned, because he couldn't help himself. 

The little roll of her eyes was withering. _If you're not dead after fifteen minutes, you'll be feeling the effects for a long time. They may get a little worse, or a little better. But a good poison, Bull, is not only intolerable, but steady._

Back at the inn, Bull had tasted _something_ in the wine the minute it went down his throat, and he waited to see what it was, while their magister friend looked on with his friendly smile. While Josephine had looked between the two of them like a scared rabbit. A wash of heat through his body could be a lot of things. Hyperawareness of every inch of his skin narrowed it down a little. 

The sudden hard-on was the clincher. Taarlok hadn't been making things up after all.

It had been at least half an hour since he'd stumbled out of the inn. He'd been dealt the long haul, then, and still owned his mind. Just his luck. But the edges of reality held fast: no shadows leering at him, no ghosts of the past staring up from the cobblestones. Boreas had miscalculated the dosage. Or maybe he didn't. 

A plan. He dragged his brain out of his memory's asshole and put it to work. Josephine was surrounded by enough of Leliana's people to be safe for a few more days. They'd probably drag her back to the ship to prevent any heroics. His own fault for not doing the same the second she suggested her little private show for Boreas. He could follow them back to Skyhold later. Red believed in survival above all else; after all, any loss could be cut with the right knife. Once Bull explained himself, she'd forgive him for abandoning Josephine.

He turned south. He couldn't think of Josephine now. Needed to be alone, outside the city. Sweat started down his spine, droplets of melting ice. A demon's thumbnail tracing the ridge of each vertebrae. The weight was heavier on his flesh than an axe and his harness combined. A dull roar built in his ears. He breathed in rhythm, just like when he stood on the deck of their schooner on the sea. Kept him level. He held on to it. Steady as he could, even as his heart thumped. Nothing else. It was flesh. Just flesh. Nothing else. 

South. He'd turned south—because Cassandra had her own private safehouse that way, from way back, even before she'd started working with Leliana. He had an address, he'd found it on the maps, while he and Cooper and Scrivener had mapped out the Inquisition's own boltholes for him. _She is precious,_ Cassandra had said, with a glance past Bull, at where Josephine was laughing with Varric. _Do not let any harm come to her. It would destroy Leliana._

The only danger to Josephine right now was him. Breathing finally even, he stepped out on the street. His pants were big enough to hide his erection. He was just flesh. He had to confuse the trail, first, before anything. He made a stir, sure, but people on the streets around their inn were used to seeing him by now, and people saw weird shit every day and chose to forget about it. The flophouse where Cass had a room was in a bad part of town, where they wouldn't take kindly to well-armed strangers asking questions. Just flesh. 

It was Hissrad who moved through the city, doubling back, taking the back alleys, not the Iron Bull. Everything was itchy—burning—he unbuckled his harness and slung it over his shoulder, and whoever was watching him, let them have a show. His head swam in the heat; his dick throbbed in time with his headache. 

The flophouse, when he got there at nightfall, was seven stories, overbuilt as anything in Cumberland. Cass's little room was on the fourth floor, she'd said. The woman at the desk glanced up from whatever she was writing, took a look at the room number on his key. "One meal a day," she said. She had a pinched mouth. Then she nodded to the stairs, and just like that, he was forgotten.

The room was paid for in full, then. _Too easy,_ said the Ben-Hassrath in him. But nobody wanted trouble, this close to the docks. The building was noisy enough, though the hall on the way up was empty. As long as he didn't start smashing up the place, nobody was going to call the guard on him. 

Bull shut the door behind him and looked the room over. A little basin with running water, not big enough for him. One bed, also not nearly big enough for him. 

A wave rippled through him, spreading up his muscles in a heaving rush from the soles of his feet. The pain hitched the breath in his lungs, rolled his windpipe between its fingers. He reached out and pressed the wall with two fingers and tried to find his steadiness again. But the ache rolled on, harder on the next wave. A tide that would eased when it eased, and nothing else. 

Ache was a better word for it. Before Vivienne, before Taarlok, Bull made a hobby of building immunity to poisons under the Qun, a competitive practice shared by most of his Ben-Hassrath comrades. When on guard duty, it passed the time. A droplet on the tongue, a sliver of an herb balled up in his rice. He tried all sorts—just to see what they could do. A bitter, serrated leaf Rivain that spawned hives to line your mouth, throat, and stomach. An inky black serum made by the Ben-Hassrath that rattled your brain with such cold, fog swept out your nostrils. Shits for days—for weeks, once. The interest never left him. Years later, over Vivienne's shoulder, he started working out the _why_ and the _how_ of making death in a bottle. 

But until then, it didn't matter. What mattered is that he could live through it. He knew enough. He could live through this. 

Simple. Dealt with. Bull could disengage from pain like he could roll over in his sleep. You put it from your mind and went on. But _this—_ this carved out an empty space. Hurt was secondary. The wanting—the teeth in his insides, screaming for heat, for breath on his skin, for a body on his—shook his hands in a tremor. He watched his fingers tremble as he pressed them harder into the wall. 

The bed seemed miniscule, all of a sudden, and the thought of curling in on himself inside it flared his nostrils. He sat, instead, on the floor, leaning back against the frame. It would pass. The door was closed, the room was far, and Josephine was in someone else's hands. Not his, not like this. Bull closed his eyes. Floor beneath his legs. Breathed, in his nose, out his mouth. That was all he needed it to do. 

But it couldn't hurt anything, to get the rest of his clothes off. Boots first, then he eased his pants down around his knees. Even the little breeze coming through the sliver of a window felt like sandpaper on his dick. He wrapped a hand around the base of his cock, gave himself a slow, tentative stroke. He hissed. So maybe he wouldn't endure. One glass of wine, and he was a stranger in his own body. Another stroke, experimental, to see what he could take. _Maraas shokra_. Why struggle? He'd live through this, whether he jerked off or not. 

Once, and he got no relief. Twice, and he made his way to the bed, to lay on his back and cup his balls. Still hard. He thought—every little mouth that had been on him, every smile up at him from down between his legs, the coy ones, the shy ones—and tried one more time, but the sheets were rough on his back, like a pair of hands scratching their way down his spine.

He set his jaw and rested his hands flat against the bed. He wasn't going to paw at himself for relief, not half an evening into a long haul. Not yet. And memories of past fucking were out. So he searched for something else, and sank into anger like a warm bath. He could indulge. 

First, at himself—saw it coming from a mile away, the 'Vint who could play nice just enough to slide under their defenses. Josephine hadn't listened, hadn't cared, and he knew she wouldn't. What mattered most to her was a smooth deal, and her own victory. Not out of malice, sure. She played games and turned heads, and that was her role. But he knew better, and he let himself get dragged up in her net. Got distracted. Wanted things to be as easy as she'd said they could be. 

The fact of the matter was—things were, they _were_ that easy with her, even in the midst of disagreement. Bull knew a lot about bodies, how they spoke for a person even when their mouth was closed. The way they adjusted for each other's spaces in public, the way she marked who stared at him in the streets, the weight of her fingers pressing a gauzy scarf into his palm. How she had decided in a split moment to summon him to fasten her dress, despite all the nimble fingers available in the inn, and how simple it was to investigate her skin, to sweep his finger against the nape of her neck at the first opportunity. How, when she yanked her hair down from its updo over noodles in a little dive, he could read the weariness on every inch of her skin, and feel a piece of himself give in. 

A determined, familiar wall stopped that line of thought in its tracks. Unfair, to go so easy on her. When he'd said _no_ , she'd taken it as a challenge, not an answer. Little, intimate personal disclosures, a guilt-trip over her scars from Haven—did he want more innocents hurt because the Inquisition couldn't do its job?—appeals to his old grudges against Vints, a high-handed reminder that he was her subordinate, and she wouldn't have stopped until she'd broken him.

She couldn't have known what her magister intended. She hadn't put the poison in the glass. But she sure as shit set the table and invited the snakes to dinner. 

He held strong to that thought, to the bitter glimmer of distraction it kindled, and let it grow. 

*

"We've found neither hide nor hair of him," Scrivener said. Josephine had been closeted with him for the past hour, speaking of any business but the Iron Bull, before he'd gotten up the courage to make his latest report to her. In truth, she had not held out much hope. "Yet," he added, before Josephine could respond. "The trail went dead around here"—he pointed at a spot on the map he'd unrolled, the bridge that connected the marketplace to the docks—"and past that point, no one will talk to my people. They don't take kindly to friendly strangers down there, even strangers with coin to spend for rumors." 

Josephine stared levelly at him, and he seemed to collapse further in on himself every time he tried to meet her eyes. As well he should. _One_ Tal-Vashoth, one very large, extremely conspicuous Tal-Vashoth, even in a place the size of Cumberland, which could have swallowed Antiva City twice over, should not have eluded Leliana's finest for three days. They had gone through the Inquisition's safe-houses, one by one. They had scoured every inch of Cassandra's personal residence, with no sign of him. 

"Keep looking," she said, at last, fanning herself with Boreas's latest missive. _My dear ambassador,_ he'd written, _your oxman was a delight. If you hear the clash of swords in the peaceful Cumberland streets, that is only our solicitors, drawing blood over clauses and sub-clauses. I do look forward to seeing you again at the signing._

Josephine had put him off for days, but kept her public appearances up. There was tea, with a wealthy niece of the Forsythia family. A short meeting with the city's treasurer, who was a third cousin of her father's, and who doubtless wanted to ask a favor of her. Tête-à-têtes with Nevarran generals who wished to know how Cullen was using the forces they'd tithed to the Inquisition. She was hardly in _hiding_. 

Whatever had happened to Bull, Boreas— _Livius Sertorius,_ she would no longer use that silly false name—had something to do with it. Magister Tilani had written back to her, saying that his condition of becoming advisor was entirely negotiable, and had only been a brief suggestion when they'd planned out their offer. Her solicitors, armed with the letter, were fighting over it.

"Did the Bull say anything?" asked Scrivener. "Anything at all, before he left?"

Josephine, who had answered this exact question to Cooper, Fletcher, and Miller in the past twelve hours, managed a curt shake of her head. "He only indicated the conversation was not quite to his taste," she said. A reduction, of course, but that was the essence of things. 

Scrivener worried at his lower lip, considering a thought, and his shoulders sagged a little. He had the look of a man who had drawn the short straw. With his next words, she knew he had. "Cooper and the others"—he chose his words with a hesitant precision— "are thinking it may be time to head home." 

"Absolutely not." Josephine passed Boreas' note from one hand to the other and resumed fanning herself. "What a preposterous idea." 

"Your business is almost done, my lady." Scrivener shrugged. He rubbed the back of his neck. "The ship waits. We'll keep looking, but if you'll pardon my saying so, doesn't make much sense for you to linger." 

"Scrivener," she said, a kind, vicious smile painting her face, " _I_ decide when business is done, and business is not done until we find the Iron Bull. I decide whether there is enough time." 

She expected this to end the conversation, but in a rare moment of bravery, Scrivener raised his glance from her shoes and looked at her straight. "Have you thought, my lady," he asked her, hands sliding behind his back, "that maybe he doesn't want to be found?" 

A pause, then, as her fanning halted. Of course she had considered it—over and over, in fact, when they could not find him within the hour, and then within the day. But no one had been bold enough to say it to her face. However high-strung Scrivener was, one did not become one of Leliana's lead agents by being timid.

She regarded the bridge Scrivener had pointed to, and the maze of run-down tenement houses beyond it. Bull was a spy, full of cunning, for all his jokes, and even though by all rights they ought to find him sticking out like a sore thumb no matter which corner of the city he holed up in, he was good enough to hide in plain sight. 

 

Josephine didn't dignify Scrivener with an answer. Bull's desire to be found, or not found, was immaterial. She would find him. So she tilted her chin up and said, "I'm going over the bridge. I'll need clothes." And that was the end of it. 

Miller, ever-eager, found her a pair of brown trousers, and a sleeveless white shirt. With great reluctance, the only jewelry she wore was the Montilyet signet, and a necklace of Leliana's, some symbol that entitled her to sanctuary at any of the tiny Chantries that dotted the Cumberland landscape. Cooper and Fletcher were unavailable to escort her across the bridge, and so she took Miller and Ser Belinda along with her. 

A city the size of Cumberland contained many slums; the ones by the docks were not even the worst of them. They stank of fish guts and shit, but they were hardly an alienage: if there were a few more tanneries, it may as well have been the docks at home. Still, Josephine, with her clean face, and her clean hair, and two women who were clearly there to guard her, felt conspicuous, though no eye landed on her. 

"My lady," Miller said, as they walked, "Bel and I checked the harbormaster's records; none of the ships leaving port had a Tal-Vashoth on their manifest. He didn't go through any of the city's gates, either. We were very… thorough." 

_Thorough_ , in such a tone of voice, with a little clearing of the throat, meant many bribes doled out and many desks overturned. Leliana would be proud of the girl, at least. "So he didn't leave the city," said Josephine. "That's good."

In truth, she had no idea what she might accomplish that a group of spies could not. Some insight into his nature that only a week of cohabitation could provide, or else the Maker himself sending a benevolent spirit from the Fade to whisper Bull's location in her ear. The two prospects seemed equally likely, at this point. But it was better than sitting alone in her eerily silent inn room, waiting to be brought meals and correspondence.

If the withdrawal of Bull's attention had been bad, his disappearance was worse. The careful application of cold compresses each morning before the sun rose disguised the fact she had not slept, or slept so little it hardly counted. She managed bread at mealtimes, discarded the rest through the window or in a handkerchief. The agents would be watching, because Leliana would want to know. And this needed to remain firmly hers. Josephine could not stand being bound by anything, it was true, but the brittle grip of anxiety was by far the worst. 

It made no sense. She had expected, after a dull luncheon with Sertorius, that she and Bull would argue, at length, and she would find a way to make him forgive her. He and Sertorius had traded barbs, but so far as Josephine could tell, it had been nothing fatal. She had meant what she said—he was far politer to Bull's face than he had ever been in private. 

They had barely exchanged words, other than Bull's brief monologue and threat of violence. _Violence_ , as though that would solve anything they had touched on that evening. The struggle between Tevinter and the Qunari stretched back hundreds of years, and if he thought the head of one magister would solve a single moment of it, Bull was a fool. She would be sure to tell it to his face when she saw him again. He would know where she stood.

Their little search party first stopped at a tavern with a faded white egret painted on the sign swinging from the threshold. A man with a white streak through his beard washed down the long bar at the back of the room. When they approached, he glanced up at them once and muttered, "What brings you to The Stork?" 

_Egret_ , Josephine thought, examining the dust on the table as Miller asked whether or not he had seen a giant Tal-Vashoth. No luck. The rest of the afternoon proceeded much the same: taverns, inns, even a brothel: the Snatch and Tongue, the most mediocre whorehouse in all of Cumberland. Miller had been appalled. 

Ser Belinda, meanwhile, was clad in the mailed summer tabard of the Templar Order, the better to inspire trust in those they spoke to. In her uniform, she was hardly sullen at all, and she chattered away happily with every third person they stopped to question, until Miller pulled her away. 

All for naught. Hours passed without result. 

"You lived with him for a week, messere," Ser Belinda said, "surely you must be able to think of _something_." 

They had stopped at a green space no larger than Josephine's office back at Skyhold, the pure green of the grass incongruous in the squalor. (Yet more magic.) There was a single bench, there was a tree, Miller and Ser Belinda had forced Josephine to sit down and take a drink of water, as though she was a frail maiden. 

"You all keep asking me that as though I'll remember something new," Josephine replied, trying to keep her tone level. The entire outing was her idea, and they likely thought of her as a millstone around their necks; it would be unseemly to snap at them for doing their jobs. 

"Anything helps, my lady," Miller said, settling gracefully on the bench next to her. "Whatever you can tell us. Close your eyes and think." 

Ser Belinda put her hand on the shoulder opposite Miller. Josephine closed her eyes. 

_Anything_. Anything at all. Anything that had struck her as unusual. Bull's sudden departure. His odd lapse, in the noodle shop: his gaze had been a thousand miles away, thinking of her going into danger. How he had fastened the backs of her dresses for days on end without so much as flirting with her, even once. How few things he traveled with, for such a long trip! His shaving kit, his spare trousers, things to care for his leather, a weapon, to be kept on their ship, a long novel, borrowed from Skyhold's library—

And a key. A small key, with a design etched into it.

Josephine had not thought anything of it at the time, but he seemed to travel with nothing of sentimental value to him—why a _key_? 

"Do either of you have a piece of paper?" Josephine asked, and felt the icy grip of the nerves that had plagued her for days relax. She remembered what the design looked like, she had done something useful. 

She let them guide her back to their inn, and in the night, as though by magic, Scrivener produced a short list of places the key might go to—hostelries, inns, tenements, anywhere one might rent a room by the docks. 

"Bit of a leap on Scriv's part, if you ask me," Cooper said, making free with the plate of little almond cakes in Josephine's sitting room the next morning. She reminded Josephine of a smaller, far more insolent Bull, and so Josephine tolerated her manners. " _I_ think Bull's gotten out of the city. It's what I would've done. Doesn't have to be down by the docks, either. Besides, when's he been out of your sight long enough to go off and get lodgings of his own?" 

"He's resourceful," Josephine replied. "Perhaps he arranged it before he came to the city. And, Cooper—" 

"Yeah, yeah, I know, it's not up for discussion, Fletch and I will take half the list, you and Bel and Miller will take the other half, we'll meet back at the bridge in the evening, with or without our friend." She rolled her eyes. "My lady." 

And so they went the next morning, Ser Belinda in her element as the jolly templar, Miller, the lady's maid, and Josephine, their charge. All for naught. Hours passed without result. 

"We ought to go back, my lady." Ser Belinda looked over her shoulder at the sun beginning to dip beneath the horizon line. It cast a dim orange and pink glow over the sea. Beautiful, even as the stink made her eyes water. There was something sweet and half-rotted on the air—a boatload of fruit from Rivain, perhaps. 

Then something fell to the ground next to her with a hideous _splat_ , and Ser Belinda grabbed Josephine around the shoulders, dragging her back from it.

"Maker's hairy _balls_!" Miller shouted, scanning the rooftops. "The one time we do not have anyone looking, they get the drop on us!"

"I thought Cooper settled the matter with them, Aurélie," said Ser Belinda, whose disapproving frown at Miller's language could have straightened the postures of a dozen recruits. "I thought we were not doing this any more." 

As it was, the slip from her code-name only made Miller's ears go red. Josephine looked from one of them to the other. This was a ludicrous end to a trying day, and she could not bear it. "Will one of you kindly—please—explain to me why someone has dropped a meat pie from the roof?"

"My lady," Miller replied. "You must understand, it's dreadfully embarrassing for all of us. We are professionals—"

"The Friends of Red Jenny," Belinda interrupted, "waged a campaign against you. We intercepted their attacks. Ser Cooper arranged a ceasefire. They have broken it." 

"I will give Fletcher twelve ears," Miller muttered, her hand on the blade she kept under her shirt and her eyes back on the roofs. 

There was a greasy piece of paper attached to the pie, and while they talked, she bent to pull it off and examine it. 

_heard you lot hav lost your ox man,_ it read. _us Friends see everything an owe you one. now we are square—_ and then there was a map of the streets, with their and the pie's position marked, as well as a point a mile away, far closer to the docks proper than the three of them had ventured. Beneath the map was a drawing of a tall building, with Bull's horns sticking out of it. 

"You needn't cut any ears off just yet," Josephine said, though their conversation had turned significantly bloodier in the time it took to examine the note. She held the paper up for them to read. 

"Could be a trap," Ser Belinda said. 

Miller looked it over, when Belinda was finished with it. "Better than looking building to building like fools, yes? The sun is going down, and—begging your _very_ good and gentle pardon, my lady ambassador—" 

"Just say it," Josephine said. 

"You will keep us out here day after sweating day, until we find him, or until Sister Nightingale issues the order to drug your wine, or your coffee, and we bundle you onto a fast ship, and you wake up at Skyhold. We may as well follow this lead, I think."

Josephine considered it. They weren't wrong. Cullen and Leliana would have to cross the Waking Sea themselves to drag Josephine from Cumberland. 

"One more," she said. "And then we return to our inn. I do think we could all use baths, couldn't we?" 

When they came to the building marked on the map, Miller opened the door for her. Belinda followed closely at her shoulder. Josephine's shirt was clinging to her back with sweat, by now. She looked thoroughly disreputable, as she approached the small desk—more of a table, really—at the back of what passed for an atrium. The place had had pretensions to elegance, at some long-distant point in the past. The moldingon the walls were peeling now, and there was a single threadbare rug in the middle of the floor, laid out like an apology.

"All full," the woman behind the desk said, barely looking up from her papers. 

"We're looking for someone," Josephine said. 

"That so." 

"A dear friend." 

The woman glanced up long enough to take in Belinda's tabard, Miller's languid posture, Josephine's obvious breeding. "I'll bet," was her only response.

Miller cleared her throat. The girl had been itching to overturn a desk all day, and this one was as good as any. It was the only amusement Josephine had, aside from the line of sleepy prostitutes at the Snatch and Tongue yesterday, still yawning and scratching themselves from their afternoon naps, being presented to the three of them. Ser Belinda had been in animated conversation with all of them at once—the dazzle of the uniform—by the time Josephine finished questioning the proprietress, under Miller's speculative, delighted gaze. 

But Josephine denied her with a shake of the head. "I'll be more direct, then," said Josephine, and drew her up to her full height. "I have a mercenary in my employ who reneged on a job. He owes me gold, and I mean to have my associates take it from his hide. We've tracked him to your establishment. Has a Tal-Vashoth come here in the past week?"

"From his hide, huh," the woman said. 

"My lady," Miller muttered. "Are you sure you don't want to let us take care of it?"

"No," Josephine said, "I'm sure she'll come around." If only from the sheer absurdity of the three of them. 

With a shrug, the woman blew on her ink, and set the sheet aside. "Might've seen one pass through," she said, "I don't pay much attention. Doesn't pay."

Josephine pulled a coin purse from one of the pockets of her trousers. The money she'd spent in bribes these past two days—best not to think about it. "What a large building you have charge of," she said. "I'm sure you see many people pass by you." And she put a silver down on the woman's desk. 

"Big fellow," said the woman. "Can't remember much else." Josephine put another silver down. The woman eyed it. "Already had a key." Two more silvers, and the woman rummaged in her desk drawer and produced a key for Josephine, a twin to the one she'd seen in Bull's things. "Looked like he was in a bad way," the woman added. 

"A bad way," Josephine said, pulling out a gold sovereign and examining it in the dim lamplight. She had forgotten her anxiety, in her enjoyment of her role, but now it all rushed back. He could be hurt—he could be lying dead in a filthy room, if he was here. All because he was furious that she'd made him have a silly little dinner. "I suppose that will make our job easier, when we find him."

"Fourth floor," the woman said, her eye firmly on the sovereign. "Third room on your left. Look for the tray of food outside the door."

Josephine flipped the gold coin onto her desk with a little motion of her thumb and forefinger. They were done here. Without a word, she turned down the hall to the stairs and began the long march up, mind racing. She betrayed a word to neither Ser Belinda or Miller during the climb. _In a bad way_ , she had said. Perhaps he had gone to a tavern after walking out of the inn, a little too much drink, and fell in with the wrong crowd. Yes, and then crawled back to lick his wounds in private. She held onto this small private hope with each step onwards, ignoring the persistent clanging in the back of her mind. An alarm bell, run over and over, that said _you have never seen the Bull beaten_ and _even you know how little sense that makes._

At the fourth floor, she posted the two of them a little ways down the hall. There was only one door with food resting outside the threshold. Ser Belinda protested, but Josephine was firm. This was hardly the time for all of them to barge in. A moment of argument, and then she left them. A few steps to his door. She knelt down by the food. A few mouthfuls of bread, nothing more. A press of her finger revealed the bread might as well have been baked with sawdust. Josephine slid the key into the lock and opened the door, did not even think to knock before she stole inside. 

She shut the door carefully behind her. There he was. 

A single candle burned at Bull's bedside, casting him in shadow. His skin, slicked with sweat, gleamed in flickers. His eye snapped open at the noise, but the steady rise and fall of his chest never swayed from his rhythm. She was taken, for a split instant, back to the deck of the ship when she'd watched him stare at the horizon line, readying himself for whatever came. Beating in the time of his heart, sweat pearling on his grey skin. 

Her eyes drifted, unable to look away, checking for wounds, for blood, she thought, before she saw he was naked. Naked and—erect as stone itself. 

Josephine's mouth went dry. Her legs, with a memory all their own, locked. She had seen him, once, having walked in ill-advised during an early dalliance with the Inquisitor. Lavellan had shouted and sent them out, and Cassandra and Cullen had pulled Josephine back out onto the battlements. Bull, of course, had teased her mercilessly afterward. If he had flirted, invited her for drinks, to _pour a cold one out_ with him—it was only as a balm for the Inquisitor's rejection, which all of Skyhold knew about.

Nothing had ever come of it. And now—here he was, laid out for her to see. Perfectly, even in the dim light. 

A rasping sound—he had cleared his throat. She jerked her head away, and saw his eye was on her. She diverted her gaze the spot on the wall just above his bed. The smell hit her next, overwhelming as the acridity outside. What she could see of his sheets were soaked in sweat. He was folded awkwardly into a bed that was much too small for his frame—one of his arms pressed up against the wall, the other laying down so his wrist touched the floor. 

Movement, then. He tried to roll onto his side to face her. It took effort, she saw. It hurt him. She opened her mouth, took a few steps forward with her hands outstretched to stop him, to halt the motion. 

"No." His voice, hoarse in his throat. "You stay right where you are." His eye was on her, a blank stare that pierced through her like an arrow. 

Josephine's feet obeyed. "What happened to you?" she demanded, trying to tamper down the shrill panic leaching into her voice. It wouldn't help anything.

"I needed a little break after that dinner," Bull said. He finally managed to roll onto his elbow, propping himself up. "Thought I'd see the other side of Cumberland."

"This is no time for jests." 

"Next time you have dinner with your magister, ask." Bull's eye closed. "Just don't drink the wine." 

"You mean to say he dosed you with something," Josephine said, staring at him like a dullard. He had the fine beginnings of a beard. He was vain about it, usually, and made a point of shaving himself so well. It grew back by the end of the day, of course. "I—why? _He's_ courting the Inquisition, why do something so ludicrous?" 

"I don't care," Bull said harshly. "Now get out, and let me take care of this. I'll see you at Skyhold, Ambassador." 

Josephine scoffed. "Because you're taking such good care of yourself," she said, picking his trousers up from where they lay at her feet. She folded them over the come stains and set them atop a small chest of drawers, and, Maker be praised, the room had a spigot and a basin in the corner. How they'd gotten fresh running water so deep in the slums, Josephine did not care. The miracle of Cumberland. She turned the tap for cold water, listened to the pipes groan, and wet a handkerchief with the trickle that came out. Behind her, Bull was silent, watching.

It was a poor substitute for the way his gaze had followed her all throughout the trip, but it would do. It was a return, at least, to what she wanted. "I worried over you, Bull," she said, relief in her voice, and knelt next to the bed to dab at his forehead. He didn't stop her. "Day and night. I hardly slept."

"Neither did I," said Bull. He closed his one eye under her touch, a deep frown creasing his brow.

"I'll ruin him for hurting you so, of course," Josephine coaxed. She chanced a look down his body. He was in pain, he was suffering, it was beyond inappropriate for her to—ogle him. Even now, he was tense. All his muscles tightened in permanent flex. For all she knew, she was making it worse."Lord Magister Livius Caecilius Sertorius, of Carastes. Once we take all of his group's money, I'll destroy him."

"Sure. Because that's all you care about. You won." Bull took her wrist in one of his enormous hands and stopped her ministrations. Held her where she was. Josephine could not protest; he wasn't hurting her, and it _was_ her fault he was in this state. But he wouldn't hurt her. 

"Of course I won," she said. "That's what I do."

He flinched. She did not expect it. Her eyes darted down to make sure she hadn't brushed against him too closely—but no, their only point of connection was his heavy fingers clutching her wrist. At her words, then? Or something within. She chose to say nothing until the silence grew too thick. 

"Say what you need to say, Bull," she said. "I can take it." 

He muttered, "Rather not," and released her wrist. She dropped her hands to her lap. 

"No," she countered. "It's only fair. Barrage me with the truth. You're good at that." 

Bull inhaled one tired breath, exhaled it on a sigh that hitched over his teeth. "Josephine," he said, "I don't give a shit about anything you have to say right now." 

A moment of strange self-consciousness as she tried to stem her own annoyance. She was owed nothing now. She had not lain on a bed in her own filth for days, wracked by a poison meant to make ravage of her soul. Yet, as she had countless times before, she required the sound of her own voice. "Well. Don't hold your tongue." 

He opened his eye again. The blank look, devoid of whatever gears usually churned behind the iris, struck her coldly. "You got what you wanted," he said. "You telling me you regret this now?" 

She couldn't move, trapped in the span of that gaze. She paused too long. Even she could feel it. "I never wanted this to happen." 

Bull's eye widened, and he huffed one implacable laugh. Dry as bone. It scraped along the walls of the room, sharp and toothed on the cheap wood. Her eyes darted along his skin again and she saw him, in the flickers of the candle, as he was. Truly as he was. A fist gripped tight against suffering. Shudders held back by force of will. Brought to his knees, perhaps, but only by his body. 

It was here, in this moment of utter failure, she realized her own woundedness. Not at herself—she had not put the potion in the magister's hand, after all—but vivid empathy, roaring within. They had hurt him. Bull, who had done nothing but stand by her side and protect without fail for days and days, had been savaged by forces beyond her control. The injustice of it made bile rise in her throat. Her own indignation rose like a cocked arm ready to strike. 

But then he spoke. "I figured," he said. 

"Bull," she began, with a sense of urgency building from the tips of her toes—the need to do something, anyway, as the wind ripped through sails and pulled her far, far off course, "Tell me what you need." 

"Go," said Bull. 

"I won't leave you here to suffer." Josephine's hands moved of their own accord, to establish any connectivity between them. She remembered his fingers, gentle on the clasp of her collar. She could return that gentleness, that patient, almost clandestine sweetness. She rested her hand on the slope of his abdomen; she felt his sudden intake of breath through her entire body. It alighted every nerve, as though her fingertips touched stars, and not slick, tough skin. Bull's breath had rattled in and out since she approached, wheezing like an old man. But this—the taut brace of his breath, how the hand at his side went slack and relaxed for a moment, an effect that rippled up his arm—was far from pain. 

_I do not hurt him_ , she thought wildly. A revelation—she could be useful, better than a ghostly presence in the corner. She might help, or heal, or whatever passed for it in such a place. She forgot, then, where they sat—the center of a foreign country, the ramshackle tenement, this poorly kept room with only a tiny window, at the utter mercy of other people. No. It was just them, now. And his skin burned hot as a brand. 

She slid her hand further down, seeking his cock on quick instinct. He breathed in again, shallower this time, and his eyelid fluttered. The movement caught her by surprise. Soft and hesitant. It was electrifying. The muscles beneath her touch fought to relax and tensed back up again. 

"It's just relief," she pleaded, her voice soft. "Let me." 

But Bull caught her arm in his tight grip. 

Josephine yelped—out of surprise, nothing else—but he held her just as firmly as the first time. A drop of sweat rolled down his nose. His jaw clenched and unclenched as he tried to speak—tried to speak past his fury. The pit of her stomach dropped. 

"I said _go_." His hoarse voice grated on her ears, a serrated blade, and all the air sucked out of the tiny room. 

She took a breath. "Bull," she said, "just—"

"What?" Bull asked, eye glinting. "He got his. You want your turn now?" 

The implication made her rise to her feet, pulling away, but Bull did not release her. He said, "You needed your oxman, right? To show off. To make you win." He had to take a breath, here. "He's a mage. He delivered." 

"That's not true," she said, uselessly. 

"You made him collar me." Every word was measured for its exact truth in his mouth. He delivered each sentence with the deftness of a killing blow. "Now you can ride the ox, right? Follows orders, falls in line. Milk him, watch him writhe. No complaints. Pretty good deal, Josephine, I'll give you that. Two birds, one stone. You get the beast and the man in one." 

Bile rose in her throat. "Bull," she said, and her own voice sounded foreign to her ears. 

He looked down at where his hand held her arm, where her hand rested on his skin, a hair's breadth away from his cock. "Shit," Bull said, "they're your spoils of victory. He even gave you the leash." His mouth twisted into a snarl. "So _pull_." 

He released her; she recoiled, jumping to her feet from the bed. He said no more. His eye closed with all the finality of a slammed door, a lock. She was alone then, in the room, despite there being two bodies huddled in it. She rushed out in a flurry, shutting the door behind her with both hands. 

Ser Belinda, with her arm on the wall over Miller's head, and her hand on Miller's chin, stopped mid-lean and pulled away. The door was thin as paper—what had Josephine been _thinking,_ offering to give Bull relief? But, clearly, they were far too busy to have been listening in. For this, she could not be upset that they'd been derelict in their duty.

"Is Ser Bull all right?" Belinda asked.

"He's quite ill," said Josephine. Her hands weren't shaking; her tone held the correct amount of concern. Nothing to suggest Bull's burning hands and fevered eyes. "A sort of affliction only known to the qunari," she went on, before one of them could suggest calling a healer. "He didn't want to be a burden on us, and wishes to be left alone until it runs its course."

Miller cleared her throat. "Are _you_ all right, my lady?"

She ushered her escorts away from the door. "I'm fine," she said. "Come, it's dark, we need to get back."

The lamps outside were unlit. There was the faintest glow of sunset over the waters. Josephine fell in between Belinda and Miller, let them guide her back to their inn. If they sensed there was something wrong in Josephine's gently turning away all their attempts at conversation, they said nothing, and spoke over her head. 

_You're really not above this?_ Bull had said, that night. Inwardly, Josephine had scoffed: she was a veteran of the Game. She had done far worse than sitting an unwilling Tal-Vashoth across the table from a magister, and, surely, he knew better than to think her _good_ because she would not kill to achieve her aims _._ Notwithstanding minor missteps along the way, there was nothing she could not accomplish when she set the machinery of her mind to it.

She _had_ gotten what she wanted. Magister Tilani had struck down Sertorius's ambition. The money was the Inquisition's. If she chose to brush this incident aside, there would be no further difficulties. She could put her signature to the paper, and leave Cumberland with or without Bull. Their forces and their reputation could survive the Chargers' loss, if it came to it. 

In refusing to guard her, Bull was in breach of contract; in having deliberately endangered him, Josephine was, as well. If she separated the situation into columns in her mind, she would not have to think of Bull's rumpled sheets, his three-day growth of beard, and her own complicity, too.

Easier too, to think of how she had been maneuvered into the line of fire. If Bull had not recognized the effects of the poison and removed himself, he would have been alone with her when it took full hold of him. This was nothing less than a vicious little lesson from Boreas— _Sertorius._ My dear girl. I said, let a wild thing be wild. I told you your oxman was a danger. One can only keep them on the leash for so long before they bite their mistress's hand. Did he hurt you? Ah, well, I'm sure you'll be wiser in your choice of bodyguards in the future. 

She could not think of what Iron Bull had said. Those words went locked behind a heavy door. When she was alone, she could turn them over in her hands, trace where they had come from, whether they had been formed by rage or truth or both. 

Both, she knew already, but to admit it was to admit this was a catastrophe. For Bull, yes. And for herself.

But Josephine could still feel where he had clenched her forearm in his fingers. There was no bruise—of that she was sure. At the edge of agony, lust's carved teeth drawing over every inch of his flesh, attempting to spin his soul into madness, he found the strength to be gentle. The memory was fervent enough to linger there, on her skin, instead of a mark. 

Josephine's blood pounded in her head. Bull did not want her help. He blamed her, and was correct to do so. He _hated_ her. He wished only to be left alone. 

But under no circumstances would she _brush the incident aside_.

*

Her scent lingered in the room. It bore down on him—a hand's heel pressing into the knob of his throat. No ventilation other than whatever crept from the gap under the door, and the little window. He tried to piece it out, to give his mind something to gnaw on, but the knowledge had spiraled itself away. Dirt from the street outside. The salt smell of the docks. Something warm. Something sweet, but not floral. Bile burned low in his throat. 

He'd known she was in too deep. Dabbling in shit she didn't understand. Playing at peacemaker, as though a lunch could reconcile a couple of blood enemies. No. It was for her. For her pleasure, for her vanity. Yeah. And he did what she wanted anyway. Did it for the Inquisition. Did it so they could go home. Did it because she looked exhausted sitting across from him at the noodle shop, holding his hand, squeezing it, a line of sweat beading along her hairline from the humidity, or the peppers. 

And then, of course, three days too late, she turned up to be a hero. _It's just relief_ , she said, her eyes half lidded and tracing down his flesh. The feel of her hand on his stomach. _It's just relief_ , she said, as though she was going to pull burrs out of his hide. As though she had nothing to do with it. Absolved, of course, because she never wanted him to be leashed like an animal in his own body. _It's just relief._ Can't control yourself alone, can you? Poor thing. A lonely beast, humping his cage. Nobody'll know. 

"Fuck that," he said aloud. His voice scratched at his throat; it sounded like someone else's. Someone old, tired, with fingers wrapped around his neck. 

Her presence for ten minutes had turned the need within him from an aching roar to a boiling howl. Hadn't known it could respond like that. But now he knew. The poison hadn't waned. It curled up in him like a serpent, ready to bite. It waited. 

He took a breath and rolled onto his side in a last ditch attempt at comfort. He tried to rut into the mattress. Nothing. His cock leaked pitifully. So that tactic was out, now. It had eased him for a handful of minutes before, despite how painful it was to grind himself raw against the bed, or the sheet, or the wall. Whatever worked. Just pain. Get through it. Nothing he hadn't done before. He tried again, until his hips ached. He stopped. 

Time ignored him. 

It'll pass, he told himself. It'll fucking pass, and then it'll be gone. His breath shuddered in and out of his lungs, and he flopped over onto his back. The bed creaked. 

Bull rested his hand on his ribs. It sparked his nerves. Didn't matter. She was the only person to touch him in three days. So his body remembered. 

Inconsistent. She had as good as put him here herself. But for that moment—a minute at most—her hand on his belly, the unflinching slide of her palm along the flesh, sodden with sweat—was a breath, the deep kind you took when your head bobbed above the water. You only needed one to carry with you back down under the waves. Out. In. Clear and bright in his chest. His mind, reaching forward with a golden warmth wrapping around her fingers: _yes._

It was the first contact with another person he'd had in days, or weeks, or years. Everything stretched out here, endless knots of hours. He tried not to think about it. 

But time did its part. Whatever anger he had gave up, gave in. His body remembered, and didn't have the energy to keep that wheel spinning. He studied the dents in the hall plaster. He marked the cracks in the ceiling. He shut his eye, tried to sleep. Nothing he did convinced him he wasn't alone, because he was, and that was the point of the ache in his blood, the blackness in the poison. _Find somebody_ , it echoed. _Anybody_. But relief was more than a hand tugging at his dick. 

After an hour, or a day, or a month, there was a gentle knock at his door. The landlady didn't knock like that; she set the tray of food outside the door with a resentful _thunk_ and let him be. The room was paid up, and rent came with a meal a day, he'd stopped trying to eat a while ago. He didn't remember when.

He waited, aimed his eye at the ceiling. Three more knocks, soft raps on the door. Did she plan to stand there and beat away until he invited her in for drinks? 

_Tap, tap, tap._ It wasn't a great decision, but there was nothing else to do. He wouldn't waste his breath cursing her name, but he would be damn sure to head out of her path. No more traps, no more schemes. No more small smiles, and touches balanced light as a feather on his arm. 

Bull cleared his throat, loud enough for her to hear, and the knocking halted. The doorknob turned, wood creaked, and then she slipped inside the room. Instantly, he could _smell_ her, her hair oil, her soap, even over his own stink. Hot food, too. Something clanked on the tiny table in the center of the room. He made no effort to cover himself. 

"I know you told me to go," she said, a little obviously. She was adjusting what she'd brought on the table. He heard the sound of fidgeting. She was uncomfortable. That was new. 

Bull grunted. 

"I wanted to bring you some clothes," she continued. "Bread without sawdust or maggots." 

Her voice was too careful, too measured in the little room. He waited for the inevitable drop. 

"And I thought of something." Her tone changed now—he could hear her turn on the balls of her feet, the swish of linen as she crossed her arms. It was a relief, to picture something besides the cracks he stared at above him. "I wonder—if you will agree with me. If it's what you need." 

"You'll say it anyway," Bull managed, tongue sticky with thirst. 

Josephine's sigh was short. Like she had the right to be exasperated with him. "I thought… we might call Lieutenant Aclassi, if you won't deal with me," she said. "After all, I may as well have put you here. But then I thought—no, he's the last person you'll want to see you like this." She moved away from him, toward the washbasin in the corner. He heard the creak of the faucet, a long trickling of water. "But I can't think of anyone else you'd _trust_ ," she went on, "and I can't just leave you. The journey can be made in four days, if he travels light—" 

Bull said, "Enough." He still sounded like crap. "I get it." 

"You don't have to decide, now. I'm going to bring you some water," she said. "I'll leave it on the floor next to your bed, by your hand."

He listened to her fuss with the faucet, work at it until it dripped enough water to fill the cup. It took long enough he closed his eye. Listened to pipes squeak, the way she _tsk-tsk_ ed under her breath when it leached out rust-colored spit before it ran clean. Her weight, shifted from foot to foot. Sounds, other than his own breath and the creak of him tossing and turning on the bed. 

And then she was at his side, depositing the cup on the floor, just as she said. Went back to the table. 

He rolled over, muscles protesting. His fingers grazed the rim of the cup—another attempt, he grasped the tin in his hand. When he raised his hand, a spasm shuddered through his arm and it slipped from his fingers. 

He spat a swear under his breath in Qunlat; she turned on her heel. He expected another of those short sighs, doled out like cuts from little knives. Instead, she came back to the bed, took the cup from the floor, and fought the faucet a second time. When she returned, she waited by his feet.

"Can you sit up?" she asked, eyes carefully trained on his face. "I'll put it in your hand." _I won't touch_ , said her face. 

He grunted, hoisted himself up on his elbows. It took too long. Probably couldn't balance holding himself up and cradling a cup in the other hand at the same time—he hadn't managed it the other times he'd made it to the tray, and after crawling across the room alone on his hands and knees, didn't seem worth it to keep trying. 

When he managed to sit up, balanced on one hand, she'd read it in him twice over. She stood at his side, held the cup forward. He could take it from her, sure, or— 

Stupid, to protest. Thirst dragged at his tongue. He nodded, just once, and she held the cup to his mouth. The tin tasted bitter, the water was lukewarm. Thirst made it sweeter than mead, even with the rough aftertaste of metal. It dribbled out of the side of his mouth, droplets landing on his skin. She let them drip. 

When it was empty, she tilted her head, and asked, "More?" 

Bull nodded. She went back to the faucet, returned with a full cup. He drank again, eye closed, and managed to take it from her, this time. His fingers brushed hers—barely anything, but enough to set his blood on fire again. She snatched her hand back to her side. _Find somebody_. _Find anybody._ Anybody was right there, kneeling next to the bed, still being real careful not to move her gaze an inch lower than his neck, to smooth the stricken look from her face. Anybody smelled like ambergris, basalm, violets, expensive, too good for this pisshole, even though she was wearing pants and a plain, sleeveless tunic; if he reached for her, she wouldn't say no, for the guilt. 

Not happening. He was hard, again, but he was still himself. He was more than what some magister wanted to make of him. 

"You brought something else," he said, once he was done with the water. "I heard it." 

"Food, and a change of clothes. And your shaving kit," she said, rising smoothly to her feet. "For when your hands are steady again." 

"What, you saying I let myself go?" 

It was the wrong note to hit. He could see the curve of her grim, unwilling smile, even from this angle. She adjusted the contents of her bag, placing them in a particular formation, then changing her mind. He collected the sounds of another body in the room in the back of his mind, other fingers on the table. He might need it later, when he was alone. 

His mind drifted back to what she'd mentioned when she slipped in the room. "So, Krem," he said. Voice wasn't so raspy now. Sounded a hair more like himself. "You didn't write him." 

That made her pause. "I considered it," she said, and even on the other side of the room he could hear the honesty in it. She'd probably had to sit on her hands to keep from doing it. Tied knots in her shoes to keep from pulling strings. "He is—the only person I could imagine here." She considered the room. "You're a brother to him." 

"Yeah." She wasn't wrong. Krem watched an eye fall out of Bull's head without batting an eyelash, and had seen enough bullshit in Tevinter to make the south and the Inquisition seem like lemon cakes on a crystal plate. Side by side, they'd burned Chargers, still wrapped in their armor, on tall pyres under the stars. He had let the Qun go, _really_ go, for Krem, and all his Chargers. But he'd lost it for Krem, standing in the rain on the Sword Coast, hand to his brow, watching the dreadnaught inch in. 

This—shit in a bucket, and come on the wall—wasn't too big of a stretch. Nothing Krem couldn't handle.

She crossed her arm, hip leaning against the table. 

"You've got siblings," Bull said. She had family—a big one, by his estimate. Her ambition for a legacy either meant she was an only child, or the only child who cared for it. "You'd want them to see you like this?" 

"No," she admitted, and this much honesty in the same fifteen minutes was new. "But that's not what we do." She went quiet, rubbed at some invisible dirt on the side of her nose. He waited as she chose her words, followed the threads. " _I_ keep them safe. Wrapped in their own happiness, far across the sea." 

The words weren't empty, or lined with sadness. Just the facts, laid out like cards. 

"What about Leliana?" asked Bull, before he could stop himself.

It took none of the thought she'd put into thinking of her family. "Sister Leliana would have seen the poison long before I did, and would cut off the hand holding the vial herself. But." She paused again, meeting his eyes. "Yes, I would let you call her. And I brought bread, and meat buns, from a stall down the road," she said, smoothly. "They didn't specify what the meat was."

Just like somebody who'd never gone hungry in their life: too much, too heavy, too soon. She brought two to him, and he knew he'd make himself sick, and he ate them anyway, tiny bites. He was starving, worse than he'd realized, and not just for food, or sex, for all that his body was tight and aching, straining toward her. There wasn't a time in his life when he'd been alone for this long, for days on end, not even on Seheron. Not even during his re-education. No qunari was ever alone.

"You don't have to answer me yet, about Krem." She was perched on the table, now, watching him eat the bread. The table was low enough that her feet touched the ground. "I'll come back tomorrow, if you like." 

He took another bite, chewed slow, and tried not to let his stomach gnaw on that phrase— _come back._ Meant she'd leave. The door would open, close, and the only sound in the room would be his breath, and the rattling of the headboard as he ground against the sheet. 

"We have time." She said it on an exhale, like it was supposed to be a kind of relief. "Well—whatever time you want." 

If she could just—sit there. Across the room. Didn't have to be near him. Not even next to the bed. Anywhere. Anything, for this floor and this bed to be where she was, and not a place she was returning. 

"You decide." Her nervousness showed in the way she touched the shaving kit on the table, undid the leather, examined the tools inside with the tips of her fingers. She wanted to leave, or didn't, and Bull couldn't totally comprehend the end of either path. "You're hurt. I won't make the arrangements without your leave." 

Everything narrowed, slowed down to one impossibility, and his heart began to pound in his chest. She adjusted herself, as though to stand. "I'll go—" 

"Stay," Bull said. It spilled out of his mouth. 

Josephine's fingers skittered to a stop on the table. Her eyes widened; he'd stunned her into shutting her mouth for the first time since she opened the door. It didn't take long for her to recover, and she said, "You don't—I won't impose myself—" 

His turn, for honesty. He didn't let her get it out. "Stay," he said, again. For the first time, his tongue wasn't heavy as lead in his mouth. 

He had lost time before in the room; nothing compared to the way it wound in on itself before she spoke again. It stretched, winding around his neck. He couldn't look from her face, from searching her eyes for an answer before her lips parted, and she said, "I—of course, Bull. Where else would I go?" 

He could do without the drama, but her name in his mouth lifted a physical weight from him. Like raising a beam alone, till someone else darted in behind you to lend a hand. All the knots loosened at a single tug. 

He couldn't look at her anymore; his eye fell on the door instead. The door that wouldn't open, or close, or whisk anybody out of it, not for awhile. He exhaled. 

"Sleep, if you're tired. I'll keep watch," Josephine said. 

Some of the sounds he'd heard outside his room, when he wasn't busy building up the calluses on his dick—if someone got curious about a woman visiting the oxman next door, he wouldn't be able to keep her safe. "What are you going to do if someone breaks in? Talk 'em to death?" 

"Iron Bull," she said, "you're safe here. If you don't trust me, if you cannot bring yourself to believe anything else I've said today, please believe that. And _sleep_." 

He didn't believe a damn word coming out of her mouth, but this had the feel of truth to it. She was too smart to come into a bad part of town on her own. So maybe she had people outside the building, or even outside the door, waiting for her to yell for help. It would be Bel and Miller. Cooper and Fletcher were well above guard duty. Like this, he was dead in the water. But he could feel the weight of Josephine's gaze on him, and he shut his eye. 

He fell quickly into a light watchman's sleep, and hovered there for a good while, half-listening to her soft steps as she walked the span of the room. He heard her open the door and murmur something indistinct to a person outside it, then shut it again, not as softly as she thought she had. But before he could wake himself to ask her who it was, exhaustion— _relief—_ pulled him under, like a hand on his ankle. 

Blackness. 

And he woke gasping and sweating, skin on fire, cock as hard as a poker, a screaming emptiness inside of him that demanded he fill it—that he fill _something_. Agonizing, but no different than the rest of the few days. He'd get through it, he'd ride it out. He squeezed his eye tight and palmed at himself, like this would be the time he'd get lucky and jerking off would do something to help. Like he wouldn't end up on his stomach, trying to start a fire on the mattress. 

From across the room, Josephine's tiny indrawn breath reached his ears. She sat against the door, as far from him as it was possible to get. 

"See something you like?" he said, through gritted teeth. 

"Bull," she said, picking herself gracefully off the floor. He was better than this. The poison was doing it. He was better than fixating on the sway in her breasts, at the top, where her corset didn't quite contain them, and her shirt had fallen open. The way her throat worked when she swallowed. The sudden breathiness in her tone when she asked, "Do you need me to leave?" 

He inhaled a serrated breath through his teeth. Even with this crap in his veins, he still had his mind. And a couple of hours ago he'd said _stay_ , because he wanted her to, and being alone in the dark wasn't doing him any favors. 

His pride said: _Get her out of here, you don't need this_ , but the voice was small next to the splitting heat of his own skin, and even that was quiet next to the gnawing ache of having to sit alone in this shitty apartment for the next hour, riding it all out. Till he fell asleep and woke up again, and it started all over. And then they'd be stuck in the same spot, her plastered to the door and him rolling around in dirty sheets until he rutted his own dick off. 

Bull shook his head, one sharp jerk. "Unless you want to go," he said, voice hoarse. He wouldn't make her. But he hadn't asked her to stick around because it was as easy as watching him sleep, and toss, and turn. He'd asked her because it was like pulling out his own teeth and leaving them one by one on the floor. It was hard. ( _Fuck,_ thought Bull.) 

"I don't," she said, and even if the way she carried herself was hesitant—he'd banished her to the far side of the room and she was slowly creeping toward the boundary, after all—her tone was honest. "Bull, I'm going to ask you a question." 

He grunted to show he was listening, closed his eye and made sure he was breathing, rested his hand on his thigh before he started to chafe his skin. 

The pause before she spoke was measured, the sound of her choosing a string of perfect words from her repertoire. It told him exactly what she was going to say, because there was only one thing that needed that kind of care. 

"Does it ease at all," she asked, and he could imagine her long fingers sliding together, delicately folded over the knuckles, "with the touch of another hand?" 

"I wouldn't know," Bull choked out. Of course she was pussyfooting around the fucking point. "I haven't exactly gone around asking the neighbors to jerk me off, if that's what you're asking."

Another pause. She sighed. He could imagine, too, her lips parted around the noise. It wasn't such a stretch to imagine them parted elsewhere, either. Swallowing him. His hand on the back of her head, big enough to crush her skull, holding her in place while she choked and struggled to hold him in her mouth, her throat working frantically around his cock. Boreas had given her the leash, but it could be pulled from either end—and _he_ was thinking this. The poison in his blood was just an excuse. 

"Listen to me," Josephine said, and her voice was tight enough that she couldn't be totally ignorant of his line of thought. "If you want to me to leave, I will. If you want me to stay and watch you suffer, I will. I'll feel tremendously guilty, and regret every moment of my hubris in tangling with Sertorius. But if you want me to give you a... helping hand, I will. Just _say_ so, and don't waste our time." 

"Fine, then. Come here," Bull snarled, because he didn't have anything in him to match that little speech. Too tired, too horny. 

He gripped the base of his cock and opened his eye again in time to see Josephine's glare, before she could smooth out her expression. That was honesty, right there. What he'd wanted all along from her. No horseshit. She stalked toward him, shoulders drawn up, and sat on the edge of the bed. Then she hesitated, for just a moment, and wet her lips, before resting her hand on his thigh. 

"You're sure?" she asked, her thumb tracing the line of one of the veins there. 

Bull's blood roared for him to snatch her hand and put it to use. The shirt was cheap, and it'd rip, no problem. The corset laces would only take a second longer. "Sure as I'm ever gonna be," he said. 

Josephine nodded, and he'd seen her reining herself—everything about her—in enough times to recognize it, here. One of them had to be level-headed. This was going to be clinical. But her fingers plucked his hand from his cock with great care and set it at his side on the bed. "If I'm doing anything you don't like," she said, and licked the palm of her hand, slowly and deliberately, "tell me. If there's anything you need…"

He made an effort not to clench his hand into a fist. "Just do it," he said. 

She didn't waste time. He could give her credit for that much—he gave her the go ahead and then her fingers were wrapped around him at the base. It set the blood thumping between his ears, so sudden the corners of his vision blurred. Her hand was warm. All day, all night, with no relief from the heat uncoiling under his skin, his own hand no better than a ghost's, and he could feel the tiny movements of her fingers as she paused. Adjusted her grip. Measuring him, maybe. Her head dipped a little, concentrating at the task at hand. He couldn't read her face. Maybe he didn't want to. 

And then she set to work, with all the concentration of writing a tightly-worded letter. At the first stroke up, every muscle in his body tensed—even when he was careful to stop, his dick was raw from the struggle to find relief on his own. She set to a pace, then, pumping him in an even measure like a conductor sternly keeping musicians in time. It didn't feel right. It fed something in him, gave the poison sensation to gnaw on. His belly tensed, the pit dropping out when she moved a little faster, sped everything along—but then his flesh couldn't take it, and he tried to sit up. 

"You gotta—" he said, and she read it in his face when it tilted up, her hand stilling immediately. 

"I'm sorry," she told him, with the quickness of reflex, raising her hand to her lips. He just shook his head, too bunched up with nerves to give much more direction. She spat in her hand this time—once, twice—before he felt her palm resting against him. "I suppose you're not all iron." 

He snorted, despite himself, and it eased the tension curled tight in the room. And then she slid her hand up his cock, slow. A stitch unhooked in his spine. He exhaled. She did it again, slower, and he could feel the hills of her palm as she stroked him all the way to the tip, and back down. Soft enough he could feel it. He could grind his cock into burlap on this stuff and not know the difference. But but on the third pass, his eye fell shut, and his jaw clenched. 

She paused again, and he almost grabbed her wrist, forced her to keep going. "Better?" she said, tentative. 

"Yeah." He could manage that. "'S'fine. Get on with it." 

_On with it_ was the same slow, long strokes, and when she paused to spit into her palm again, Bull did take her hand, close his fingers around hers, guide her back to him. She let out a faint little shocked noise, more a breath than anything, as he thrust his hips up into the circle of her hand. Another shallow thrust, and she got the idea, focused on the head, with short, hard strokes, now that he could take it. Her thumb passed over his slit. The movement of her hand felt determined, now, not hesitant; she cupped his balls firmly, leaned over him as she worked. 

Her soft lips were parted. At some point, her eyes had gone glassy. If—he thrust up into her grip again, and it was good, the way she struggled to adjust to his new rhythm—if he took her by the back of the neck and pushed her head down, she wouldn't say no, he bet. But all they'd agreed to, fast and sloppy as it was, was a handjob. Josephine put a gentle hand on one of his hips, like she could keep him down on the bed while she worked, like she had a chance of restraining him. And her hand running along the heavy bone there, like she was suddenly fascinated by it, was the push he'd needed. 

Just enough. Almost forgot to give her the heads up. "I'm—" he started, and then swallowed once, for air, "I'm gonna come." 

"Yes," she said, and tightened the circle of her fingers, just enough. The tension in his groin buckled, and for one stark moment, the lukewarm pleasure of it flooded out any pain. For the first time—days, hours, years. Since he'd dragged himself out of the streets and up into the room. Clear and clean as water. 

He spilled over her hand, thick, white spurts that dripped over her fingers. Her breath hitched, but she didn't stop—she worked him through it, loosening her touch, and his come made her fingers glide over his flesh with a slick, wet sound. She stroked him again, and again, until his hands gripped the sheets and she let him go, afraid of causing pain. All at once, it was over. 

And then the room was unbearably silent, without the sounds of heavy flesh and breath to fill it. His chest heaved, up and down, and already the persistent buzz of the poison started to rise in the back of his head. But he could deal with it. The edge, sharp and hot as a brand, was gone for now, and his head was fuzzy enough for a moment's peace.

He looked up at her. She held out her damp hand at an angle—gracefully enough to look like she was asking someone to dance, even though she was only pulling a handkerchief from her pocket. White linen, embroidered with gold and blue drakes. He imagined she had a whole crate of them, stashed somewhere at Skyhold. She stood, and the shift of the mattress as she walked over to the faucet made the world feel off kilter. 

Water pouring, however briefly, from the tap. Her hands, rubbing each other back and forth under the stream. She turned on her heel and came back to the bed, wet handkerchief in hand.

He opened his mouth—the sheets were covered in every kind of fluid that could leak out of him and it wouldn't make a lick of difference—and her hand paused, just above his abdomen. Waiting for him, he thought, to tell her to fuck off. 

But he didn't. He could count it against the rumbling in his head, or the bite of the poison in his brain. She ran the cloth against his belly, around the base of his cock, a damp press on his balls. Minimal. Just enough to keep him clean for the next hour, until his blood starting roaring again and it all started over. 

Josephine paused, just after lifting her handkerchief from his dick, in thoughtful consideration. Done, probably, but she wasn't moving. Her eyes weren't glassy anymore, her teeth worrying at her bottom lip. She lowered her hand to his hip and ran the damp cloth along the bone. Just once. And then the other side, for the sake of symmetry. One slow, inquisitive stroke. Not for curiosity, of course. Just cleanliness. 

He watched her do it. He marked every motion of her wrist as it turned along the line. 

She looked up at him, with not quite a smile. "There," she said quietly. "Enough for now."


	4. Mercy Stroke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It starts with a shaving scene. Josephine discovers her hidden depths. Bull makes an offer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, s/o to Katie for catching all our dumb mistakes. One more chapter to go after this! Thank you for sticking with us this long. If it sounds like a dick joke, we promise you it is.

He slept peacefully, this time around. 

Josephine retreated to the door. The room was dim now, but there was still light enough through the one high, narrow window to see Bull, curled on his side, his soft cock lying against his thigh, days' worth of beard shadowing his face. His massive chest rose and fell smoothly, and he made no fitful whimpers to tug at Josephine's heart, or her guilt— _tug_ , indeed. 

She flexed her hand experimentally, ran her thumb over her palm. He had been like a steel rod under her touch. For a moment, it seemed impossible to think of anything else. Other than her dirty handkerchief, left in a pile with other detritus, the only other evidence of what had happened was the heady smell in the room—its usual must and rotted wood, overlain with the acridity of sweat. It had happened. It had happened, and he had found enough relief to sleep, and here they were. 

She dusted off her hands, as though she’d just completed a long and arduous task, and not worked a man’s cock until he’d spilled. _To alleviate suffering_ , her mind gently reminded. He’d 

been in pain, the poison’s sharpness digging into him. Of course. To make him better. 

The need to laugh gripped her almost painfully. She stifled the sound and only a little huff of air escaped into the room. She could do this because he was asleep, and the guards were dutifully standing outside, and she was as alone as she could be. After all, sitting in the room alongside the sleeping Bull and her, awkwardly watching him breathe, was some piece of the truth, as crumpled up and tossed aside as her handkerchief. 

She needed to leave and did. Once she was sure he wouldn't wake, she slipped outside the door, where Miller sat watch over a sleeping Belinda. They would surely have heard what had happened. If they valued their positions, they would pretend they hadn't.

"He's doing much better," Josephine said, smoothing her hair back from her face.

"Right," Miller said. She was doing her very best to ape Fletcher's blankest expression, but Josephine could see the curiosity blazing in her eyes. "My lady. Right. Anything you two need?" 

Josephine reached into her pockets to pull out a handful of silver pieces. "Food and drink, for all of us. I don't care what it is, as long as it's edible. I'm staying the night." 

And, by extension, so were they. Miller looked petulant, then dismayed, then, assuredly, she remembered that it was her employer's job to decide things and her job to deal with them and that she very desperately wanted Josephine to whisper something sweet in Leliana's ear about her, and she nodded curtly. "Wake up, Bel," she said, nudging the templar on the floor with her foot. "C'mon, we're going shopping." 

Bel woke with a start, and soon enough the two of them disappeared down the hall, hand in hand. If they bent their heads together to mutter about what had happened, well, they couldn't be blamed. Thus, they waited until they were far from her sight and ear before undoubtedly doing so. Josephine took a moment to breathe in the hall before opening the door again, and shutting herself in the room. 

She would man her post at the door once more. With luck, he would sleep a few hours, and Bel and Miller would return with some halfway decent sustenance. The room was warm. She would have given all the gold in Antiva for a larger window, to let a little of the night air in, but there was nothing to be done. 

She thought her nerves would be too frazzled to sleep—festering on what to do about Sertorius, or their next course of action. But she was tired. It had been a tremendously long day, and eventually she nodded off, her head bobbing in an off-and-on doze. She woke at little sounds—rat scratching, someone slamming a door on the floor below. Each time her eyes opened, she glanced to the door and then to Bull, who slept undisturbed, and the cycle repeated. 

Sometime later, she woke to the sound of Bull rattling around in bed, tossing and turning. Sure it was another—spasm of some kind—she found her way to her feet in an instant, brushing her hair away from her eyes. 

"Slow down." Bull’s voice, from the bed, raspy. "Just sitting up." 

He hadn’t been able to manage it before. Even the smallest movement caused pain. But he jammed his hand into the mattress and pushed, his back curving forward as slowly, slowly, he found himself upright. Not without wincing. She almost opened her mouth to say _don’t push yourself_ , but the set of his jaw wouldn’t have any of it, she was certain. When he finally sat up, balanced between his hand and leaning precariously over his legs, he was short of breath. 

"Well done," Josephine said. 

He snorted, a haphazard glance from his good eye. "Ha. Spare me." 

Now that she was standing, and for want of anything to say, she needed something to do with her hands. She went to the table, to sort through her bag. She'd intended to leave it behind, if he threw her out. A bar of soap: violet-scented. Tooth powder. Bull's shaving kit, which was finer than she'd thought it would be, now that she'd looked at it.

She had opened it—and looked into it again and again—when he'd been gone, but she pretended to be very busy examining its contents, now. Across the room, Bull attempted to swing his legs over the side of the bed, and succeeded on his third try. He held his head in one hand. "Shit."

"Dizzy?" she asked, without more than the briefest glance up at him.

"Better than I've managed," he said. "Amazing, what a helping hand'll do. Call it a mercy stroke." 

His tone was too light for gratitude, and too heavy for a joke. Josephine closed his shaving kit, and looked up to see that he was attempting a smile. She began, "Bull, please. I don’t need any handholding." As soon as the words came out of her mouth, they seemed a poor choice, and her brow furrowed. "You don’t need to make light of it. You were in pain. You needed help." 

"It happened," Bull said bluntly, over her words. "You jerked me off. No sense in talking around it." He made an unmistakable gesture between his spread legs. 

The day Josephine allowed crudeness to put her off would be the day she went back to Antiva City and became a fishmonger. She held his gaze for a long second, steady and flat, and went back to the back to the door, cracking it open. 

Miller sat on the floor, dozing, her hand—Josephine had seen Leliana do this enough—cradled around a blade. Ser Belinda stood over her, firmly on guard. "My lady?" she asked, keeping her eyes trained on Josephine’s face. She handed over a box with food in it, and a clean, full waterskin. The angle was just so that a view of Bull in the periphery—haggard and sweat-ridden, wearing nothing but a stained sheet—would be more than possible. 

"I need warm water," Josephine said. "With some speed, if you would." 

There was a flash of anger on Bel's face. _You just made us sleep in a hallway all night, where am I meant to get hot water here?_ Under normal circumstances, Josephine would be sympathetic; but under normal circumstances, they would not be in a dockside slum. So she raised her eyebrows and waited until the moment of rebellion flickered out, which it did, in short order. Templars were useful like that. For unquestioning obedience. Bel hesitated for a moment longer, her eyes flickering toward Bull, in his bed, before nodding and disappearing down the hall. 

"Is this how you want to do it?" Bull asked dryly. "You want to bathe me while pretending you didn’t just have your hand wrapped around my dick?" 

"I’m not bathing you," she answered. "You're not a child."

He cleared his throat. "Josephine," he said, and it was the first time he’d spoken her name aloud in the room. Of that, she was absolutely sure. He was wise enough not to gentle it. "Look—"

"Of course I know what we did." She looked over her shoulder at him, propping the door open with her foot. "I offered, didn’t I?" 

"I’m just saying," he continued. "I’m not trying to humor you about it. This is how we do it under the Qun. You get yours, you pop the cork, and you go. It's not… weird, for me." 

"As you’ve made clear." 

"So," he said, "no need to humor me, either. I know what happened. I had my head on straight when I said yes." There was a pause. "It happened. It helped." 

Part of her wanted to ask aloud, _Did it? Help?_ But he’d slept long enough to answer that question for her, and Bel had returned to the door of the hall with a bucket. It seemed incredibly quick, but Bel shrugged her shoulders and set the bucket on the floor inside the room.

"Always water boiling on some stove in a place this big, milady," she said, and Josephine chose not to inquire just as to where she found it. It was warm enough, and she closed the door. 

She plucked his shaving kit from his bag and went to the side of his bed, armed with water and blade. "I don't want to bathe you," she repeated. "I want to shave you. If it will help." 

He blinked once—surely a man such as Bull could have divined what she meant from the start—but perhaps he’d been too preoccupied with reassuring her they were both adults. 

"You don’t know how," was the first thing out of his mouth. 

"I know more than enough not to cut you," she told him. "Do you want it or not?" 

He rubbed his hand over his beard, then through the short, patchy growth of hair on his head. "Just the beard," he said, at last. "If I can trust anyone in my life to hold something sharp at my throat and not slit it, it's you." 

Bel had lifted the bucket lightly. Josephine had to use both hands to haul it across the room to him. Bull watched, amused. "Bathe, first," she said, and went back to the bag, to toss him a towel she'd pilfered from the inn. "If I'm going to be within arm's reach of you for Maker knows how much time, you'll be clean while I do it."

"That hurts, Josie," Bull said. "This is my natural musk." 

_Josie_ , was it. 

She suspected, along with his ability to set himself upright once more, that the poison was beginning to bend towards its natural end. Either that, or one orgasm under her hand was the price of finding a modicum of comfort in her presence once more. Perhaps a little of both. 

He washed sloppily; she watched him from the periphery as he dunked a towel into the water and rubbed it roughly under his arms, a sweep across his chest. His hands could grip the towel well enough, but they shook all the way from the root of his shoulders. Just enough to catch her eye. It had worn him clean to the bone, and doing much more than wiping off his own skin would be impossible. He’d cut himself clean of skin itself if he tried to handle a razor. So she tidied his things, and waited until he dropped the towel in the center of the bed—after he’d rubbed between his legs for an extremely determined minute. 

"That was quick," she said. 

"Pits, tits, and shits." He sat still for a moment, examining his hands. "It’s all you need on the road." 

"Perhaps you won’t smell as poorly as you look," she said, and picked up the shaving kit from the table. She made her way to the bed and then hesitated before perching on the edge. He gave a nod, and she sat, spreading out the kit over his lap. His razor and its strop, a cloth and a half-filled bottle of shaving oil all wrapped precisely in their places. 

"Don’t bother with the strop," Bull said, watching her drop a washcloth in the water. Some warmth had subsided; it would do. "It’s sharp enough." 

"Very well," she said, and pressed the cloth along the hard planes of his face. Her hands were small for his broad jaw, but she managed well enough. He squinted at her when she finally took the cloth away. "Ask your questions now, before I have the blade on you." 

Bull said, "You practicing in your spare time?" 

The question underneath his words was clear— _who do you do this for?_ She uncapped his little bottle of oil, depositing a few droplets in her palm. It had no discernable scent whatsoever, completely utilitarian and utterly unsurprising. She rubbed it in at the point of his chin with her thumb first. 

"My brother," she answered. "He caught a sickness sweeping through Antiva City when we were young, and he couldn’t stand a beard." 

Bull made a non-committal noise under his breath as she kneaded the oil into his skin, travelling the path up his jaw to the bare space under his ear. The coarse hairs of his beard prickled under her fingertips. She had never seen Bull anything other than clean-shaven, and could not help but wonder when the last time someone had felt each needling brush against their skin. 

"You don’t believe me?" she inquired, raising an eyebrow. She was careful to wipe off her hands before selecting the razor from the kit. She pried it open in one movement, testing the blade for sharpness on her thumb. 

He shrugged. "I guess that’s one way to learn," was all he allowed. Of course he didn’t. It was easier to believe she'd picked up this skill specifically to get under his skin. He spread his legs to accommodate her, adjusted the sheet in his lap so there would not be any unfortunate slips. As though there were anything she hadn't already seen. She touched the blade to where his whiskers began on the knob of his jaw, she could concede the vulnerability required, at least. 

What had he called it before? _A mercy stroke._ She scarcely applied any force at all, just smoothed slides of the blade along his face, with brief pauses to clean the razor. Her free hand settled on his shoulder, to remind him to be still. It was ridiculous, of course: if he wanted to move, nothing she could do would stop him. But he was statue-like under her touch. He let her move his face this way and that, without resistance. Before—when she'd taken him in hand—she hadn't had the time to appreciate the feel of his skin; watching him at a distance, this entire trip, she'd thought it would be rough, like lizard-hide. She gave in and stroked her thumb over his collarbone, glad that she had been wrong.

"Everyone was terribly ill," she said, turning her mind firmly back to the task at hand. He was her captive audience for a moment, and she couldn’t help but take advantage. "Rashes, fevers. One of those summers where the whole city smells like the dead. The pyres didn’t stop burning for weeks." 

Bull made an understanding noise. Yes: if anyone would know about pyres, it was him. Josephine went on, "Laurien was fourteen. Fortunately, he survived the illness"—an understatement, he had been near to death, Josephine had come all the way back from Orlais to say her goodbyes, only to find him recovering when she arrived—"but he came out of it blind. Unfortunately, the men in my family incline towards hairiness."

"Not the women?" Bull said, through tight lips, as she brought the razor up over his chin. 

"Why do you think I wear high-necked dresses? My pelt would put Ser Blackwall's to shame," said Josephine. 

She drew back from him, to lean over and re-wet the towel. She would have to be as blind as her brother to miss the way his gaze dipped down, caught on her breasts. That wasn't a surprise: she knew full well he appreciated her figure.

A huffed-out laugh at her joke, a moment too late, when she cleaned the razor again. Still, she had missed this. She'd missed _him_. He was dependent on her, right now, but he was a master spy, who could give off any impression he so chose—warmth was not to be mistaken for camaraderie. She tilted his head back gently to tug his skin taut over the bob of his throat while she worked at it. 

"So you learned," said Bull, the next time she raised the blade to clean it. He never waited longer to speak than the very moment she raised it from his flesh. 

"So I learned," she concluded. "I was terrible, at first. Little tufts of hair left every which place. I left a burn all along his cheek." 

He huffed a laugh, a sound that disturbed his chest but not the movement of her hand. Practiced. As though he knew how to laugh with a sharp point at his neck. "Nice thing to do," he said finally, "for a blind kid." 

So. He still didn’t believe her. Perhaps it seemed too altruistic, a story that painted her in too bright a light. But, then, he hadn't believed her about her scars, either. It had been written plainly on his face. A professional liar—a man whose name had, quite literally, been _Liar_ —would always believe he was being lied to. 

"Maman and Papa were too busy, and the rest were too young." 

"You had servants," Bull said. "I’m sure they’d shaved a face or two." 

Josephine tilted her own head back now to look him square in the eye. "Iron Bull," she remonstrated him in surprise. "Would you trust just anyone with a blade to your brother’s throat?" 

She had forgotten to pull the razor away from his cheek, but he didn’t seem to consider it. "Point," he said finally, after a great deal of quiet. 

Indeed. 

"Good story," said Bull, absently. 

She leaned in close to run the blade along the stubborn hairs on his chin, the last to go. "He can do it himself now," she said. 

"I’m sure," Bull said, with enough disbelief that instead of putting the razor down she placed it in his hand. His clumsy fingers wrapped around the handle while she dipped the—regrettably used—towel into the bucket and wiped his face clean of the rest of the oil. She didn’t have to look down to know his hand trembled with the effort of such a small, precise movement. "And he had you in the meantime."

"Everyone needs a steady hand," she said, examining his face to admire her own handwork, and when she glanced up to meet his eye, Bull was looking at her. "Yes, yes," she added quickly, hastily, even to her own ears, she was still standing between his legs, " _steady hand,_ mercy stroke, the rest of it. Make your jokes." 

Bull looked curiously grim, instead. "Do they bother you?" he asked, curious. 

She shook her head. "Of course not. Am I a child?" 

"Didn’t say that." When in possession of his full faculties, Bull also could fix his full attention. She typically basked in it, as naturally as breathing, but not when it was applied so discerningly. "Let me say it another way. What’s bothering you?"

"What a silly question." She said it on a sigh, turning to go back to the table, perhaps to goad him into eating something. To leave the conversation there. But Bull reached out, with that same shaking hand, and took her wrist. Then he leaned around her and set the razor back in its case. There was so _much_ of him. She itched to touch his shoulder again. "It doesn't matter how I feel about it," she said. "The deed is done, is it not?" 

It evoked a sharp memory in her—the bed, him outstretched beside her, and his fingers on her wrist, directing her where to go. "What is it?" he repeated, blank as a page for her to fill. 

His question made her laugh in a way his jokes hadn’t. "We should list the opposite," she said. "You are poisoned by a man who wanted to punish you for being Qunari, and me for thinking I had any understanding of how negotiations worked. He gave me precisely what I wanted, and now you have lain here in this terrible room for days, besiegedby your own body until the very person who put you here is the one _handing_ you whatever comfort you can scrounge." 

"It happened," he said, for what must have been the fiftieth time. 

"I know," she snapped. "I cleaned your come off my hand." 

He considered this, but did not let go of her. She could see him puzzling her honesty like a riddle, parsing through fallacies. It was impossible to tell his conclusions, only the machinery her words were rigged through. "Why didn’t you go?" he asked, finally. 

It was not the question she expected. "Back to Skyhold?"

"Sure. Why tear up half of Cumberland looking for me?" His shrug bewildered her. "I’m a smart guy. I can find my way back." 

"Clearly, it would have been _entirely_ unconscionable to—" 

"They’d still be here." He motioned at the door, where surely Miller and Bel had their ears pressed to the door. Miller, at least. "Nothing stopping you from leaving. Iron Bull walks off in a huff, takes a week off to work out his damage, gets back home a couple days late. Don’t tell me it didn’t cross your mind." 

She exhales. "It did," she said. "For about half a minute, I suppose." A pause. "A whole minute." 

"There we go." The look he gave her was clean of judgment. "I can figure why you came back to this hole, Josie. Setting up camp in the corner, sleeping in front of the door, like a dog. Because—" 

"—the Inquisitor sent you here as her tool, to ruin these negotiations," she blurted out. She had done this, her anger and her pride had done this, and the guilt was stronger than her will. She could not seem to stop confessing. "I used you as my tool to further them." She swallowed. "I ignored all you had to say, even when I knew you were right. _I_ twisted your arm to make you appear at the lunch. Setting the table." 

He squeezed her wrist, and she fell silent. "Yeah," he said, with deliberate patience. "I know. I got it. You fucked up." There was no arguing with him on that point. "But you didn’t have that little speech ready to go when you decided not to get on that ship." He ran his tongue over his teeth. "Or did you?" 

"No." 

"So why not leave?" Bull asked, and his voice went soft. Whether to make a point, or because of the rawness in his throat, it was hard to say. "Go home, figure out how to make it up to me. What you’d do with anybody else." 

She would have left the room long ago if it were not for his hand on her. He held it very carefully, as though she would flutter away if he squeezed too tightly. The slight tremor in his fingers trembled against her tendons, where the arch of his big thumb cradled her wrist.

Bull simply watched her, _waiting_. She knew—she _knew_ that the best way to make someone talk, to make them spit out whatever thought was in their head, was to sit there in silence. _I'm sorry._ Insufficient. _I'll hang his cock from Skyhold's flagpole for you_ —perhaps he would laugh. But she had already tried that tack, and he had not been interested in vengeance.

A lump rose up in her throat, however momentary. There was no way to sell him on forgiveness—they were long past manipulations by now. He had seen her repertoire in its entirety, in that little noodle shop. She had no desire to reach for her tricks when it came to Bull. All that was left to her was the truth.

"How could I go?" she murmured. "It would be—" _Failure_ did not quite fit. _Betrayal_ , too melodramatic. "A mistake, in every sense of the word, and one I could not live with." 

He didn’t nod, or withdraw his hand. He only continued to watch, eyes focused on her face as though he read each line, each little change as her lips formed the words. Of course, once she’d found him, he’d thrown her out and demanded she leave him alone, which she’d promptly disobeyed. This passed between them unspoken, as though he could tell the thoughts cycled through her head, like a turning wheel. 

Josephine cleared her throat and said, "You left a space, Bull. An absence." Again, the truth pressed her forward. "I couldn’t sit in our rooms and hope, or go on about my business and stall for time while Leliana’s agents scoured the city again and again. It was—unbearable, to think of you wandering around this city you hate, all alone." 

The last word, perhaps, stirred him to speak. "So you looked." 

"You hated me, I was sure. You’d refuse me in no uncertain terms. Tell me to carry all my own clothes back to Skyhold." It had happened. "I went anyway. Abandoning you—" 

"It’s not really abandonment," Bull corrected her, "if I throw you out." 

"If only sense made sense. If only it _applied_ ," she said. She couldn’t look at him any longer, and dropped her gaze to where his fingers easily circled her slim wrist. He held it so gently, even though his hands might shake otherwise. "Next I would’ve mucked through the sewers, every inch of the slums—until Leliana and Cullen rolled me up in a rug and tossed me into the hold of a ship. Whatever it took." She paused to take a breath, and let herself say it. "I had no desire to give up when it came to you, even if I could. Yes, against all sense. It was impossible." 

He tilted his head just enough that she marked the moment out of the corner of her eye. He considered her, and his own mind, before exhaling. The sound of a man coming to a decision. 

"Well," said Bull. "I’ll be damned." 

"If you want me to go," Josephine began, shifting away. 

"Nah," he said, the pull of his hand still insistent. "Hold up." 

She paused, perfectly still as he mulled over whatever he was going to say. The moment stretched for years. It was terrible, to have said something so, so _raw_ and to be met with no clear answer. 

"It’s a mess," he said. 

She nodded. 

"This shithole? Still a shithole." 

"Yes." 

He exhaled, one long, slow breath. It was almost a sound of relief. "But you’re all right," he said. 

Josephine held her wrist as close to her body as she could. If she yanked, he would let her go, she was sure of it. He was—hungry for touch, or he was securing her loyalty, or _something_. Whatever he felt he had to do in order to keep her here with him. She'd seen his raw hunger, when she offered to leave him. "You're being ridiculous," she murmured, and it came out throatier than she intended. She did not make that sort of mistake. 

"You came through, Josie," Bull said. "You’re good at it." 

"Don't brush this away," she replied. She put her free hand over the one holding hers, running her fingers over his scarred knuckles: if he wanted even more touch from her, or from any warm body within arm's reach, it was the least she could give him. "I didn't… there's nothing admirable about what we've done in this place. You're miserable. I'm guilty. Neither of us _win_. When we walk out of this room…." 

"I'm not gonna hate you," he said. "Sure, I did, when you strong-armed me into that dinner. And then some more, when I was all alone here."

"That's entirely fair," Josephine said. His demeanor was calm, and his grip, still lax, but his skin was feverish. She took a cautious step closer into his grasp. "You don't need to force down your distaste for me. I'll survive it." 

"Josie," he said again, nearly as punctuation. It was effective in making her pause, at least. "I’m not giving you an out. I asked you to stay." 

It wasn’t a question. She nodded. 

"I didn’t do that to make you feel needed," he continued. "Or useful, or so you could feel good about helping me later. I did it for me. Because I wanted you here." He released her wrist, and for a moment she felt herself free-wheeling, as though she were a scrap of a cloth caught by the wind. But his hand only moved to her waist instead, wide enough that his thumb pressed into her belly, resting along the curve. 

"You _push,_ " he said, "like sometimes you want to put your arm up my asshole and wiggle me around. Like a puppet." 

" _Bull._ " She wrinkled her nose. "It’s precisely what led us here—" 

He shrugged, and he wasn’t joking, not now. "And it brought you back." 

Somehow she’d gotten closer—as close as she could be without stumbling into him. She had catalogued how close the two of them had been standing, but now it could not be ignored. It was completely irrational, to want to lean against him now. He was ill and had only managed sitting up, but they were close enough she could smell the scent of his sweat underneath his shaving oil. His hand was fever-hot on her hip, and she wondered if the rest of him would feel just as warm under her fingertips. 

She no longer needed her imagination to bridge those gaps, having wrapped her hand around him just a few hours before. 

Maybe he read this in her face, or perhaps he’d known since the beginning, but Bull made sure to catch her eye when he said, "You didn’t hate it." 

No use asking for clarification on _it._ Her eyes dropped between his legs too quickly for most to follow, but he saw. This, too, was a question. She shook her head once, but he waited for her to clear her throat and say aloud, "No. But I was only—" 

"You gonna rationalize this away?" he asked, pressing the pad of his thumb into the softness of her waist. Gentle pressure, to make her blood begin to simmer. "Okay. Tell me, then." 

Looking away from him was impossible now. Bull would not sit and stew in this, the _what-ifs_ and _what-nows_. He wouldn’t lie in this bed, wondering whether or not Josephine had meant what she did or if she only gave her hand out of guilt. No. He asked because it was plain as day to him already, and there was no room in the tiny apartment for shyness any longer. He had to know. She was certain of it. But Bull needed to hear truth spoken aloud for it to hold weight or water. 

"I wanted to," Josephine said. She could feel his breath on her throat. Something glimmered in his eyes. "I wanted to do it, and I would have done—more, if you needed it, I would have—"

Whatever she meant to say next was lost; he tugged her close, the final step, and his mouth tasted of water when it met hers. Surely, there were protests to be made, this was not the time, this was not the place; but it was a slow, easy kiss, his grip firm on her waist. Josephine's own hands fluttered to his shoulders, slid up the sides of his neck. The tendons there were rope-like under her touch, his muscles, straining, and she pulled back enough to make a soothing noise. So tense, and without need. Wasn't that a part of his Qun? There was nothing to struggle against. 

Josephine pressed her lips to his forehead, then to the place where his horns met his skin, with as much tenderness as she could muster. She felt his exhale at the touch, a slow, warm breath fanning against her neck. A sigh of relief, trapped between their bodies, close enough only she would know. They both said nothing, but he was here, far from alone, and safe in her hands. It was enough. 

And then he could no longer keep still, eager to fold her closer. His hands had slid back down to her hips, and now there were no dispassionate observations to be made about how warm his flesh was, when she felt it like a brand through her clothes. He leaned back far enough to capture her lips again; she yielded gladly. _This_ was not her responsibility. 

"How much more?" he asked, his mouth pressed to her throat. 

The rumble of his voice tickled the tender skin there, as though the question itself teased her flesh. The graze of his teeth made her shiver, enough that she felt the grip of his fingers tighten in response on her waist. 

She thought wildly, for an instant, of unlacing her trousers and sliding one of those big hands between her legs. It had been hours since he needed her, and just being close enough to shave his face had reminded her powerfully of the moment, a dull and idle pulse between her thighs. 

Instead, she answered, "Enough for mutuality." and ducked her head to kiss him once more, his lower lip between her teeth. _Your hands on me._ When they parted so she could take a breath, she said, "Reciprocity." _Making you come. Coming myself._

"To know what you wanted most," she muttered against the corner of his mouth, the hands spanning her waist holding her with a stern force that wouldn’t halt, "and not stop." 

"I thought so," Bull said. "I could smell you." 

The way his breath shuddered a little at the end of it, serrated and eager, lit each link of Josephine's spine with sudden heat, propelled her forward. He shifted backward on the bed, and she followed him, so that she could kneel on it between his spread legs. The clean linen of her shirt scraped against his chest. One of his hands came up to squeeze her breast through it, crudely, and she arched into his touch. This was what she'd wanted, when he'd loomed behind her to do up her dress for her—those buttons, too tiny for his massive fingers, she had known precisely what she'd been doing, and been too much of a coward to acknowledge it. So close, she could feel his cock lengthening between them. 

So close, she could feel the moment Bull's body seized. 

His lips on her neck; the hand on her breast; the other, settled lightly on her rear, preparing to press her into his erection—everything stilled. His exhale was jagged, frustrated. 

"If we need to stop," Josephine murmured. 

"I—" he started, and then his jaw went tense, his eye screwing shut. The hand on her breast dropped to the sheets and clenched the soiled linen there as heat undulated through him. Josephine felt his frame tense, arc, and settle like a wave beneath her. He was big enough the bed trembled with it. 

He was panting now, ragged breaths his discipline attempted to keep in time. She rested her hand on his hip, fingers tugging at the sheet covering his lap. "May I?" she asked, a little urgency in her voice. He nodded and she pulled the sheet away. Even the movement of the thin cloth on him made his spine tense; he was rigid as stone, no longer the slow growth perpetuated by the closeness of another. This was the poison—his flesh strained as though he’d been hard and untouched for hours. 

"It plagues you still," she said. 

Bull nodded, a quick jerk of his head. "I think it’s leaving me," he managed in between soft _huffs_ for breath. "But I bet it puts up a fight on the way out." 

Ah. Her closeness hadn’t helped, she was sure. She pushed down whatever sharp-edged reactions rose in her towards the circumstances putting them there—what mattered now was Bull, and the concentrated way his chest rose and fell under the onslaught.

She opened and closed her mouth, fumbling for the right phrase when Bull caught her wrist again and said, "Please," his breath hitching in the center of the word. 

He had not wanted gentle treatment, before. He would not want it now. Her hand immediately slid to his balls, working them firmly. The groan Bull let out, when she squeezed the base of his shaft—days of desperation, fury, frustration, brought to bear in this one moment—she felt it in her own chest. Josephine spoken of vengeance, before, but only as a matter of course. Only on the rarest of occasions, when she was as suddenly furious as she was, watching him rut into her grasp, did she wish she was Leliana, or someone like her, who had the capacity for murder. But she had only herself. She drew up as far as she could, to press her forehead to his.

"Lay back," she murmured, and, with a helpless glance down at her, his lips parted, he complied. "Tell me what you need," she added, running both of her hands down his chest, straddling him so that his cock brushed her belly. 

"Take it off," Bull said harshly, reaching for the hem of her shirt. She drew back, out of his reach: in his state of mind, he would surely shred it, and she had not brought more clothes for herself.

In his state of mind—Josephine paused her fumbling at the top clasp. "Bull," she said, a chill working its way down the back of her neck. "You are… aware. Of what we're doing. You want it to happen, yes? If you wish me to stop, if it's too much, _say_ so. Say—something." It was ridiculous; even in a diminished capacity, she was sure he could simply fling her across the room. And yet. He had said he was sure before, but that was no guarantee of surety now. 

"Josie," Bull replied, glancing incredulously down between his legs, "if I was any more aware—"

"'Milk him,'" Josephine said. She kept her eyes fixed on his face. "'Watch him writhe.'" She had thought of the words hourly, since she'd left him alone. She had deserved them. "'He gave you the leash, so _pull_.' If you still think this is about leashes...."

"Okay. Look." His voice had gone low and heavy. "You don't want it, I don't want it, just say 'madrigal,' everything stops. Got it?" 

Madrigal. With a jerky nod, she pulled her shirt open, then tossed it to the floor. His hips strained off the bed toward her as she worked at the laces of her short stays, the muscles in his thighs bunching. She had been fascinated by them before, never mind his cock—the scars, the thick bones, the places he was soft, the power in his form. "Say it," Bull breathed, jerking her from her reverie. "So I know you know." 

She pulled the last of the laces free, the stays coming loose in her hands, and said, "Madrigal." It completed whatever ritual he required for them to continue, and as she leaned over to place the clothing on the ground, he made a soft, rusty noise under his breath. Want, perhaps, and complaint of their brief separation. 

She returned her hand to the root of his cock instantly, her mind on relieving the ache. Her breasts hung low and bare as she leaned over him. He shook his head and lifted his hand—she thought of how warm his palm had been across the linen of her shirt as he cupped her before. But instead, only the backs of his fingers trailed across the curve of her flesh, and she felt every little roughness and ridge of his knuckles. It made her shiver; his wrist trembled with the precision of the effort. 

Josephine took his hand in hers, opening the fingers one by one until he cradled her breast against the hills of his palm. His hands were large enough to carry her easily, and she went still. Closed her eyes at the touch. 

He exhaled slowly through his nose. His other hand tugged at the material of her trousers. "The rest," he said, rough-voiced with effort. When she paused, he repeated himself. "The rest." 

It would not help to bring him relief, whether she was clothed or unclothed, or if the pad of his thumb rubbed at her nipple in graceless circles until her toes curled. But it became—real. She realized this as she leaned back to pluck at the laces of her boots, his harsh breathing filling the room. He watched every movement of her fingers, as she pulled off her boots, her stockings, undid the laces of her trousers and peeled them from her legs. His eyes darted, just for a moment, to the patch of gnarled scar tissue revealed at her side, but didn’t linger long. They roamed over every inch of her flesh as it met the stuffy air, hungry. 

It made them equal. Bull was not the only one lying on the bed, aching for touch. When the last of her clothes had been cast to the floor, she perched between his legs, just as naked and in need of what only another could provide. 

A fine sheen of sweat covered his skin by the end of her undressing, and he was unable to lie still on the bed, his skin irritated by every surface it touched. She moved to kneel between his legs once more, but he tugged her up until he could kiss her once more, and he groaned when their bodies folded together, her thighs straining as she sat astride him. 

And then his hand slid between them, thick fingers sliding through the damp folds between her legs, startling enough that she broke the kiss. 

"This is for you, Bull," Josephine said, her lips a hairsbreadth from his. "I don’t need it—" 

She stopped speaking when his the pad of his thumb circled her clit, her breath falling short. When she opened her mouth to protest again he repeated the motion, and her thoughts flew clear of her head. As though they'd never been there at all. What was left: where she touched him, he did not hurt. Any warm body would have done, but he wanted _her_ , against all odds. 

"Move," he ordered, his hand stilling between her legs. His enormous hand. "Show me how you get yourself off." She did not need any more prompting, she ground against him, short and fast strokes, as she stifled her moans into his shoulder. She opened her eyes long enough to look up at his face, and his lips were parted. With his jaw clean-shaven, it made him look almost like a boy. Young, earnest. 

Then Bull withdrew his touch, and she made a frustrated noise. Not a whine, never a whine, a _complaint_. Their bodies, together—even if he had not truly been able to smell her before, even if it had been nothing but his arousal talking, surely, he could smell her now. He had felt how wet she was. 

She would not be teased, she managed to think, her mind disordered. Show me, he had said. Well. 

Josephine shifted upwards, her hands splayed wide on his chest. His skin was decorated with scars fine and thick—her fore and middle fingers covered six knife-thin marks, made by a demon’s claw, perhaps. She did not like to rush like this; when she found herself in bed with a new lover, she wanted to relish their body. But she suspected he needed this to go on. Not because he owed her. She needed release, and he would find a way to give it to her: for the Iron Bull, it was that simple. Still, before pulling back, she bent her head and brushed her lips against the marks, and felt to his body still with tension. 

When she settled her hips over his, the folds of her cunt resting against his cock, it was her turn to inhale sharply. He was too big to ride without significant preparation—she had known this. But Bull was as slick as if he’d been anointed with oil from the dampness leaking out of him; he was so hard she imagined if she pressed down hard enough, she’d feel his pulse against her clit. Even so. She balanced herself with her hands on his belly, and rolled her hips in one honey-slow rotation. The first drag of her flesh across his made her breath hitch, her clit sliding across the ridge of his foreskin and back again. 

At the second slide, Bull groaned, grasping her hips in ample handfuls. To urge her on. His heels pressed into the bed, arching his pelvis. The movement sent curls of pleasure up her spine, and Josephine's head dropped forward onto her chest. They had an audience in the hallway, she knew. The walls may as well have been transparent—she needed to be quiet—but her groan filled the space between them, the entire room. She looked in time to catch the satisfied smile on his face, and he did not let her pause. He squeezed her hips harder and moved her over him, as though she were an extension of his own hand, merely something he was using.

It was filthy. Everything about this was filthy. She reached down and plucked his hands off of her, to lace her fingers with his, as she ground down on his cock. She had given up her long strokes, from the base of his cock to the tip, and focused on the head of him, short, quick jerks. It wasn't enough. She shook her hands free of his, to lay against him, her chest flat to his, straining for her orgasm.

"So that's how you do it, laying on your belly? In bed?" Bull's voice reverberated through her, a sound that curled around the base of spine, and grasped. Of course he would be a talker, Josephine thought distantly. He held her close to him, cradling the back of her head, gentle, as she panted over him. "Not enough?" 

"I…." Josephine trailed off, and held herself still on him, to catch her breath. She would get there. 

He arched his hips to rub himself against her in one brief, rough stroke. Her eyes fluttered shut. "Tell me," he muttered, and did it again, more forcefully. The movement made one of the bedposts thunk against the wall. Her mind went fuzzy at the edges. "I said tell me. _Josie._ " 

"In me," she managed at the end of her breath, "I need—" But he was already moving. Making her finish must have been a suitable distraction from bringing himself off—but then he had pulled her up his body, far enough her face was pressed against his neck once more, and she had no cause to think any longer. Even in this state, he could move her as a ragdoll. Without pause, his hand worked its way back between her legs. 

The rough pad of his thumb rubbed a few fleeting circles around her clit, enough to make her squirm, not to satisfy her. But just one of his fingers, thick and dull-clawed, began its push inside. Slow. Maker, slow enough to make her curse. She forgot how to breathe as he filled her. The stretch ached, but she pushed back against his hand. Beseeching. Every inch of her skin shivered with it. He curled his finger, testing with little, slow movements that evaporated thought, as though she were drunk on the steady rock of his wrist. 

"You can take more," Bull rasped. It wasn’t a question. Her teeth grazed the tendons of his neck as another finger caressed her wet flesh, pushed inside. It choked her, her nails digging into the sheets by her head, a moan falling carelessly from her lips against his throat. 

Sweat pearled at her forehead, an idle droplet sliding down her nose. The sopping sounds of his fingers pumping in and out of her filled the room. If anyone could hear, if Belinda and Miller had their ears pressed to the door, if the entire hallway was gathered to listen to this, she no longer cared. When she came, Bull groaned in her ear as though they shared their flesh, the relief carving through her clean and warm, a golden thread unravelling from where he held her body in his hand. 

*

Josephine Montilyet lay against his chest, breathing. Josie. Connected, composed, unflappable. Except for that one time she and company had found Bull with the Inquisitor, and she'd looked overjoyed at the sight of his dick, where Cullen had peeked over his tablet, and Cassandra had done… whatever Cassandra did, when she was uncomfortable. It had been two years. He couldn't remember. He'd picked her out for an easy mark, to get over the sting of Lavellan turning her back on him: _Hey, Josephine, what're you doing later?_ She was overworked, she was tired, she wouldn't have any problem riding the Bull.

She'd walked away with a glare, back then. He hadn't spared much thought for it otherwise, moved on to other climes. And now. 

Bull thought back, foggily, to standing on the prow of the little schooner on their journey here. He’d made a life out of reading people, but trying to trace how they ended up lying on this dirty bed—with her smiling up at him, lazy and satisfied—wasn’t possible. Bull didn’t weather surprises often. He stroked the skin of her back, and the pads of his fingers caught the thick patch of burn scars at her ribs. Wider than the span of his hand. He hadn’t thought they were real—or if they were, she was exaggerating, trying to pull his strings. Just another piece he didn’t know a thing about. 

She shifted under the touch. Didn’t like them touched, stroked, looked at it, or talked about. He’d see about that. Later. For now, the movement reminded him how hard he still was—he rolled his hips enough to rub his cock against her soft stomach. She laughed drowsily, a soft little sound. 

The poison roiled, didn’t give a shit. His blood was hot with her atop him, lounging. He could still pick out the sweet scent of her hair oil under the sweat. He rutted against her a little harder—he could come like this, sure. It wouldn’t do much, not like when she’d at least jerked him off. But the edge was white-hot and stinging. 

"Iron Bull," she said, rising over him, her grey eyes half-lidded. 

"Using the full name." He was past hard. She was no longer touching him and the space was unbearable—"Must be serious." 

She pressed her lips against the smooth plane of his jaw, as though testing her good work. "I said I would have done more, if you required it." She steadied herself with a hand on his belly, and his hips arched up out of reflex. 

"I remember," he said, making sure his breath didn’t stutter. 

She gave that soft laugh again, the vibration of it through his skin _hurt._ "Do you need more, Iron Bull?" 

He nodded, one swift jerk of his head, and she kissed him, as though he was asking nothing, as if curling up to him in the filthy sheets were the easiest thing on earth. He asked for her mouth, when they parted—he’d been thinking of it since she helped him the first time, how close she came to dipping her head and taking a taste. When she wrapped her lips around the head of his cock, her little hand stroking what her mouth couldn’t cover, he was sure the floor under them could hear the sound he made. 

It didn’t last long—it was hard for him, now, just to lay still while she tried to bring him off. Reminded him too much he was here because of the poison, even if neither of them were doing this for guilt. He slid down the bed, his heels dragging into the mattress, and made her move so her legs were spread wide by his horns. She made a murmur of protest that went right through him, her nails pressing delicately into his thigh, then pulled off his cock just enough to speak. "You've done more than enough," she said, breathless and high, and even her breath on his skin was enough to set his blood on fire again. "You don't need to—" 

If she thought _that_ , she didn't know a damn thing about him. Bull put his whole mouth on her, holding her steady by the hip, and felt her tense as his tongue parted her folds. Nothing. No reaction. He ran his fingers through her wiry curls, licking her bittersweet taste from his lips. "No reason why you should have all the fun down there," he said. 

"Reciprocity," Josephine replied, softly, as though she was confirming something for herself. If she could still manage four syllables, he wasn't doing his job—and her mouth closed around him again, hot and tight, taking him in as far as she could before almost pulling off, then again. He spread her open again, set his tongue to her clit, felt how her rhythm faltered. Her grip on his thighs became vise-like. 

It was slower, this time. Easier. Like they were learning each other. Her mouth was soft, her hand steady on his balls, and she worked him with a competitive precision. She wanted him to come first. If he hadn’t been nose deep in her cunt, he would have snorted. Nice of her. 

He slowed the way his tongue circled her, felt her tremble with the effort. She’d come in no time flat when he’d fucked her on his fingers, but he suspected she had a weakness for being savored, and he was right. It was an easy bet. One more long, flat drag of his tongue and she moaned in the back of her throat. His hips arched of their own accord, and when he came it arced through him in a razor-sharp spike of relief, hard enough he had to take his mouth off her to catch his breath. She sucked him through it, swallowing, her fingers reaching up to wipe errant drops of come from her chin. It was almost too much to watch, and he nipped the inside of her thigh once, to hear the surprised sound she made, and sunk back in. He brought her off with her forehead pressed to the crease of his hip and thigh.

They discovered after he was still hard—truly hard, as though they’d never even touched. The poison wasn’t screaming through his veins, although Bull was sure it was only a matter of time before it flared up again. "I told you," Bull said, watching the concern in her face, trying not to hiss through his teeth as she ran a fingertip up the underside of his cock. "The worst is always at the end. Won’t flag." 

"How awful," Josephine said mildly, crawling back up to splay out on his body like a chaise. She examined him as though she were concocting a plan, her nose nuzzling against his cheek. "Kiss me again, please." 

After that, there was no more hesitation, no more talk of _you’ve done enough, let me._ They kissed until she was hot again, rolling her hips against his thigh, and she guided his hand between her legs. 

"Again?" he asked, and she nodded. 

"Well," she managed, as he pressed a finger inside—slow but slick. She was wet as water. "However many you need so I can—" She faltered when he crooked his finger forward, her breathing coming quicker. 

"So you can do what, now?" Her face was hidden in his neck—she couldn’t see his grin, but he was sure she could hear it in his voice. 

"I'm not saying it," Josephine muttered, gasping when he began to rock her on his hand. 

"Saying what?" Bull asked.

She gave his chest a gentle slap. "'So I can ride the Bull.' There.”

It took working two fingers in her again—a truly beautiful exercise, Bull thought, watching that nearly made him forget the insistent pounding between his legs until she came all of a sudden, gripping him tightly as a fist. His blood howled and howled, imagining the feel of her on his dick, that desperate need to _fuck into_ someone roaring back to life. It took him a full minute to catch his breath, as though he’d been the one jerking on the bed sheets. When she rode him, she sank down onto him slow as molasses, careful and shaking. 

The mass of Josephine's hair fell around her face. When she rose up, he could feel her cunt clench around him, felt her try to relax, she had to adjust to him, he couldn't be impatient. He gave an experimental thrust up into her as she came back down on him, and she made a startled, strangled noise, carefully stifled. 

He didn't care who heard. His hands went to her hips, then up, to run over her belly, then the scar, and the plane of skin between her breasts, dewy with sweat. With the next roll of his hips, he felt the breath flutter out of her. One of her hands gripped his forearms, her little nails digging into his skin. She ground down, rocking back and forth as though she were working him deeper. Sweat beaded between her eyebrows, and her eyes closed in focus. 

Louder, he thought. Looser. She was thinking too much if she was still worried about their audience in the hallway. No space left in his mind for a lazy, leisurely coupling—the need to come was licking him like fire from his balls to his brain— so he seized her by the hips, and lifted. Lifted her just high enough to watch his cock disappear inside her flesh, heard the wet sound her cunt made as she slid back down. 

His arms protested—he should be weak as a kitten—but gasp she gave was addictive, an unhinged sound without a hint of forethought. Her eyes suddenly opened. “Again,” she muttered, a clear demand, and his blood howled. So he did as she asked, and when he couldn’t do it any longer she leaned forward, bracing herself against his belly and rode him like she was hungry for it. Every thrust up elicited a new noise through her teeth, unbidden and sweet as sugar. 

The room echoed with the soft, fevered groans she made with each rise and fall, and the sodden, unmistakeable sound of their flesh, and Bull’s unashamed grunts of relief. He was drunk with it, the grip of her cunt—drunk on the squeeze of it, the sound, the way her hands grappled for purchase against his chest. She shook with the effort, and Bull thought, hazily, he’d be content to watch her take him in until they left Cumberland, and maybe all the days after. 

It was easy to thumb her clit from this angle, and Bull watched her—felt her, fuck, with a clench meant to pull his soul out of his body—come hard enough she had to pull off him, with a high-pitched moan that wound up and up as though it were trying to find a way out through the rafters. But she wrapped both hands around his cock, fingers laced to the knuckle, and it only took three strokes before he was dripping all over her fingers, her belly, her thighs. 

When he caught his breath, open his eye, she was smiling at him, perfectly pleased with herself. And him. Maybe his stomach did a little flip, or maybe it was just the sheer happiness of finally getting his rocks off. 

As for the rest of it—

Flipping Josie on her stomach, hearing her gasp in mingled joy and ache. Slow, easy thrusts that rocked her whole body. Watching her claw at the sheets as his cock bottomed out in her. They went at his pace this time, rhythmic and deep as rowing a boat. (The thought made him groan, chuckle into supple skin of her nape.) He came, quick and hard, squeezing one of her breasts—

A muttered request into her ear, Josie fumbling on the floor for his shaving oil—she'd done this before, she knew exactly what she was about—and the press of her fingers into his ass wasn't much, but it was enough. More than enough. She managed three inside him, and teased him with only the tips until he begged. Just once, his voice cracking on the plea, and Josie relented with a brush of her lips against his spine. Turned out small hands could do a lot, with a little determination. She explored the scars on his back, her palm smoothing the rough skin, and she pressed lingering kisses to the deepest ones, while he jerked himself off. Better than doing it by himself—

One last time, face to face, her legs wrapped around him and her hand working furiously between her legs, his thumb pressed against the flawless divot of her throat as his cock rubbed against the crease of her thigh—

The poison had come upon him fast, sitting in that stuffy little room, with the lemon cakes, and Boreas, and Josie's low-necked dress. It left him, at last, hollow and empty, with equal swiftness. He slumped onto the mattress, on his side, his limp cock flopping against his inner thigh. Josie took a deep breath, then rolled off the bed to stand. Satisfying, seeing her sway on weak legs. 

"Not one madrigal out of you," Bull said. 

"Iron Bull," said Josie, her voice groggy. "If this is a joke about making me sing, I'm leaving you to rot here." 

His come leaked thickly down her inner thigh, translucent white against her skin. He reached out to run a finger up through the trail it had left, and she shuddered and looked over her shoulder at him. 

"Don't tell me you're not finished," she said, part exasperated, part... yearning. Her eyes were trying their very hardest to spark with disapproval, but her hair stood out in a wild halo around her head; her cheeks were flushed. Somebody here wasn't finished, but it wasn't him. 

"Look," he said, "if I get a single hard-on for the next six months, you should go looking for your Maker, because he's come out of his Golden City to take a vacation." 

"I do hope he chooses somewhere nicer than Cumberland," she said, then walked across the room to the faucet. His gaze stuck to her swaying hips. His cock did not so much as twitch. She didn't seem to have any qualms about being naked before him, but when she turned, after washing her face and privates off, her hand splayed out to cover the scar on her ribs, almost unconsciously. Compared to Bull's—shit, his entire body—it was practically a beauty mark. 

"So that’s it?" he asked, and she flinched, her spine going stiff. 

She nodded once, and came back to the bed, perching on the edge of the dirty sheet. "You thought I was lying." 

Not a question. He shrugged, because it was true. "Exaggerating, maybe." He reached out and tapped at her hand. "Let me see." 

Josephine hesitated, but then her hand fell away. There was a practical streak in her somewhere—marathon fuck session aside, there was little to hide between them any longer. She cast her eyes at the door and gave a sigh. The breath rippled under the flesh, the rough skin. 

It was wide enough she couldn’t cover it all under the span of her fingers, but easy enough to hide under a gown. The burn had spread farther than this, once, but years had done their work and the rest had faded into faint, deep shadows. Bull had an eye for scars. Others might miss it. Not him. He ran the pad of his thumb along the edge. 

"Haven," Josephine said, to fill the silence while he examined her. The story stopped there, because he knew no one else had survived what made it. Her fingers knitted together in her lap, and she turned her gaze on him. 

Bull nodded. "Rough," he said. 

"Yes." She opened her mouth, as though to say _but I hardly think of it anymore_ , or _it was a long time ago._ Instead, she closed her mouth and lay back down next to him, wedged between his arm and his side. It was too hot with them pressed together, but he didn’t care. He let his fingers stroke from her wide thigh, up her hip, against her ribs and over the skin. He did it once, twice, and once more, until she let out the breath she was holding in one, soft exhale, and he closed his eyes. 

*

When Bull woke, he nearly crushed Josephine in his haste to get to the—now cold—food. He had slept like a babe in arms, but his physical exertions had been tremendous; Josephine could hardly blame him. She hobbled from the bed to clean herself. 'Pits, tits, and shits,' indeed. She would need to soak for a week, until she wrinkled like a raisin in the sun. Bull, too. If there was a washtub in Cumberland that would fit him, she would find it, and buy it. She gathered her clothes from the floor, foregoing her underclothes. Bruises marked her thighs, her hips. Even the act of pulling on her trousers made her ache all over. 

"These are good," Bull said, from the table, in between bites of food. "C'mere."

Bull did not even let her finish buttoning her shirt before he made her sit and share his food—stale as it was. The meat within was greasy and bone-cold, the turnips and cabbage gone mealy, and Josephine could not remember the last time anything tasted better. After he finished, he leaned forward and kissed her in the middle of a bite, like a heathen, before he turned her around, despite muffled protest. 

He gathered her hair into a neat mass, running down her back. The scale on which he was built was so different from hers as to be laughable, each of his fingers, so large she couldn't imagine how she'd fit them into her the day before. But she had always admired his hands, and closely: how they could heft enormous weights, and perform tasks as tiny and graceful as clasping her dress around her neck. And braiding her hair, to make her presentable. 

He took his time, combed his fingers through it and tugged away the worst of the tangles. She meant to bend, to finish putting herself to rights, but she found she could do nothing more than sit as he went through the motions. He wound the braid around his hand when he was done, just for the pleasure of it. When he released her, she could not move until he gently nudged her forward, his chin resting against her shoulder. 

"Knight-Captain," Josephine said, coming out into the hallway with Ser Belinda and Miller.

"My lady," Belinda said, looking her up and down, as though she was surprised to see her intact, let alone walking upright. "I'm not…." 

"Knight-Captain Belinda Darrow of the Templar Order, awarded her rank for exemplary service," Josephine added. "Commander Cullen and Knight-Commander Barris will each have a glowing letter on their desks before we return to Skyhold. Miller, I don't have the faintest idea how the Nightingale ranks her people, but rest assured, I will put in a _very_ good word with her."

Miller took Belinda by the elbow and kissed her, very sweetly, on the corner of her mouth. "We didn't hear a thing, Bel. _I've_ been deaf for the last thirty-six hours."

"Very well," said Belinda, her ears flaming red. But her jaw as stubborn as Josephine had ever seen it.

More than enough to suit Josephine’s purposes. They waited in the hall until Bull emerged, legs not quite steady but well enough to walk. He stood in the threshold of the door, one hand carefully balancing himself against it. His eyepatch had been lost, somewhere along the way. She looked up at him. It did not quite seem real that he had survived this, whole and hale, until he was standing a few inches away from her. 

"Can you make it back to the inn?" she asked. 

This was met with a loud snort. "You bet your ass," Bull said, and to their credit, neither Bel nor Miller sniggered. 

Still. It was a long walk. Bull moved slowly but surely through the streets. He held himself tall and upright, as though this were his usual pace. It had rained at some point during the night, and the cobbles gleamed dully in the morning light. The clouds were low and thick with the promise of more; the streets were near-empty, but for shopkeeps sweeping water from their stoops and opening their stalls in the markets. The odd wagon, delivering food up the hills to the noble houses in the city's interior. For the first time since they'd arrived, no one was staring: a small blessing. 

Josephine had been gone for two days, by her count. Bull had been gone for six. What came now was damage control, to limit such rumors as would spring up from their spending days alone, together, far from interested eyes. Even Bel and Miller's collusion would not be enough to keep the rest from wondering, when the two of them returned disheveled and filthy, stinking like sex and sweat. 

And Bull—Bull swayed on his feet, until Belinda finally sighed in irritation and put his arm around her broad shoulders, lest he collapse into a puddle. He met her eyes and gave her a rueful little grin, as if to say, _Hey, I gave it a shot, right?_ Without prompting, Miller walked up to a man with a load of cabbages on an oxcart and, after a few whispered words, hired it to take them the rest of the way. 

Their inn's proprietress gave them a mortified look as they tracked through her pretty yellow tearoom, then up the narrow stairs, with Bel bringing up the rear and shoving Bull before her. It might have been funny. When they reached their floor, Scrivener was waiting for them, bouncing on his heels. Cooper and Fletcher had their door cracked, and were peering out into the hallway. 

"My lady," Scrivener began, "there's been a message from the magister, and you've got a raven from Sister Leliana, and you left no orders—" 

"You're right," Josephine said, in her most chilling tones. "I didn't." She paused and stepped aside to give Scrivener a moment to look Bull over: the dark, bruised circles under his eyes, the haggard face, the way he leaned on Bel. 

"Ser Bull," Scrivener said. "I'm glad you're well." 

"He's been tremendously ill, and I've only just finished nursing him back to health, as I would have done for _any_ of you. The Inquisition's people are more important than my business."

There was a snicker, from either Cooper or Fletcher. Scrivener's face was impressively blank. 

"Now, please, go downstairs," Josephine went on, gently, "and speak to the innkeeper. You will find a washtub in his size, and have it brought up to my room, and it will be done quickly. I don't care what you have to do, or what you have to pay. Once it's delivered, the rest of you"—if only to prevent any eavesdropping at the door—"have the day off to do as you will. Understood?" 

Cooper muttered something into Fletcher's ear. As Scrivener rushed down the stairs, Bel helped Iron Bull into Josephine's room, dropped him in his armchair, and wiped her hands off on her trousers. 

"Get some rest," Josephine said to her, and to Miller, who still stood out in the hallway. "Or—do whatever you wish, and have the bills sent to me. Up to fifty sovereigns. Each." There, that was twice their combined month's wages. Pocket change, for Josephine. Belinda's jaw remained stubbornly set, but Miller's eyebrows shot up her forehead. Josephine added, "I meant what I said, about your commendations. You've shown more forbearance than I—" 

"As you say, my lady," Belinda interrupted, not without bitterness, and closed the door behind her on her way out. 

And then, at last, they were alone. 

Bull had fallen immediately into a doze. He shifted in his chair, which creaked, as it always had. The book he'd had been reading the night before the incident still lay on the table, waiting for him. His battered tin of horn balm, which she had not thought to bring with her, sat in the middle of Josephine's hair oils. And her ever-present stack of correspondence—and the letter at the top of the pile, which bore a very particular seal. 

Sertorius could wait. He could wait at _least_ until she was clean, and had a proper meal in her stomach. She hadn't eaten this poorly since Haven. 

She pulled off her disgusting shirt, mindful of Bull's presence, then her trousers. Her undergarments, too. When she was naked, her sweat cooling on her skin, and the fear had passed that Bull would wake specifically to tell her she was repulsive and what they'd shared in that room was nothing but a convenient fiction, she went to her wardrobe and picked out fresh stays and a clean white dress, relishing the feel of the fresh, dry cotton against her skin. It would take time for the washtub to be delivered—and it _would_ be delivered—let alone filled, and in the meantime, she rang for food and a large bottle of wine, which were delivered by the proprietress herself, who peered into the room through the crack in the door, as though to assure herself that her guests had not torn it to shreds in the quarter-hour since they'd returned. 

"You shouldn't have sent all of them off," Bull rumbled, once the woman was gone. 

Josephine, wrestling with the cork, paused in her struggles. "You," she said, "need to sleep. Preferably in a _real_ bed." Not that hideous mattress-on-sticks. It was a miracle they hadn't broken it. Bull had been very athletic, for a man who'd been through a week of poisoning. She still ached between her legs: a sweet ache, and a hollowness. "And they've all been working since we arrived. They deserve a holiday."

One of Bull's hands came up to scratch the craggy skin atop his head, but he said nothing. The place where his horns erupted from his skull was raw and cracked from neglect. Without a word, she set the wine bottle down on her dressing-table, and took up his horn balm. He watched her, his eye slitted, and said, "Go ahead." 

"Besides," she added, "we're a bit past thinking of my security arrangements." She stood between his legs and bade him tip his neck forward for her. The horn balm smelled sweet and rich as she rubbed it in, then moved her hands down to the back of his head. Not a day before, in this exact position, she'd held a razor to his throat.

One of his enormous hands caught her around the waist; rather than hold her close, or pull her into his lap, he only held her still. "Are we?" he said.

"I—" A spike of anxiety shot through her. She did not know the boundaries of this particular map. "I don't dally," she said, acutely aware of the way his thumb had taken up rubbing circles on her waist. She had wondered, more than once, how the Qunari operated with their partners, but asking Lavellan was out of the question. Varric, of all people, had mentioned once that Qunari didn’t go to bed with their comrades, and it had made so little sense she'd brushed it aside and forgotten it until now. Who else would they go to bed with? No wonder Bull had such strong sword-arm, she'd thought, and left the matter at that. "I'm well past wanting to lay with someone only for... physical release." 

"Fair enough." Nothing about the confession seemed to faze him. "Makes sense." But then he moved to lean back, as though he might pull his hand away, and she did not let him go. His thumb paused now, carefully considering her. "I’m not in a rush," he said. "When you figure out what you want, I’ll be here." 

"When Ifigure out what _I_ want." She returned her hands to his horns. His thumb resumed its circling. An impasse, even if he didn't know it yet. There was something in Bull that had been trained to want to acquiesce, to yield control, to be molded into a tool for others' use. Perhaps it was his Qun. Perhaps it was simply his nature. She would not take advantage of it again.

"Sex, something more," he elaborated, with a shrug. As though it didn't matter to him either way. "To pretend this didn't happen. Whatever." 

"And your desires don't signify at all? You're not some… empty receptacle for my passing lusts." 

"I want what you want." 

"That's not good enough," Josephine said sharply. 

Before she could continue down this line of argument, however, there was an insistent rap at the door. "My lady," Scrivener was saying through the wood, and still knocking, "we've got the tub. The house of ill repute 'round the corner had one Ser Bull's size. Innkeeper says it'll take an age to heat up the water for it."

"Tell him lukewarm's fine," Bull said, and relinquished her with a gentle shove. His face was unreadable. 

If it were her, she would want to soak in boiling water for a week, but having a bath at all was a luxury for Bull, she supposed. "She doesn't need to heat it," said Josephine, cracking open the door and looking up at Scrivener, who was toying with the hem of his shirt. Maker, but he was nervous, for one of Leliana's senior agents. "Have it brought up at once. And—thank you," she added. "For your service. For everything."

Scrivener only bowed his head and turned on his heel, darting down the stairs. The effect was somewhat like a lizard scampering back under a rock. She pressed the door shut with both hands, and turned to face her own quarrel. Neither would argue in front of Leliana’s people, and time was suddenly of the essence. 

Bull sat back in his chair, his face as blank as clean marble. He regarded her solemnly, and tented his fingers over his belly. _I want what you want_. An enormous offer, and entirely unacceptable. Josephine could not tell if the silence was disapproval, disbelief, or both—perhaps no one had ever questioned the offer. Perhaps no one had so explicitly said, _No. Do better._

Finally, he gave her a once-over from head to toe and said, "You really want to argue about this now?" 

"No," Josephine said. It was temptation itself, but she had stood at this threshold before: Bull's acquiescence to her wishes, whether freely given or forced, held no charms for her, now."I have work to do. Bathe, first. Eat, if you're up to the task." She gestured at the meal, at the bottle of wine she'd forgotten. Her skin felt too tight—she could hardly sit next to him, let alone lift food to her mouth. 

No. To break bread with him would give a false impression, as though the matter was _settled_. His words rattled in her brain, bells on iron. A moment to let him eat, and a moment to let herself—breathe. She swept around him and went to her writing desk, where her correspondence awaited her. 

Her fingers were still sticky with the horn balm, and she rubbed it absently into her own skin, turning her attention to the pile of letters. Endless matters requiring her attention, all of them more pressing than the man sitting behind her.

But she was aware of Bull's every movement. Every one, from the sound of him tearing into the pile of warm bread they’d brought up, to the rasp of his fingernails, scratching an itch. He let out a happy sigh, a hedonist's sigh, at the taste of the wine, though it could not have been good for his stomach. Whenever he adjusted himself in his seat, the wooden frame creaked under his weight. At one point, he must have nodded off to sleep again, because she heard a snore, then a surprised snuffle, just as Josephine heard heavy footsteps up the stairs. She realized she’d spent the past fifteen minutes staring at one of Sera’s long, rambling notes on useful gossip she'd picked up from Friends in Cumberland, complete with an exquisite drawing of Lady Vivienne atop the library tower at Skyhold, farting. 

The bathtub—which could have fit four Josephines—was borne by two enormous, shirtless men, followed by Scrivener, who openly stared at the second one's exceptionally taut behind, and gave her a sheepish smile when she caught him looking. He had also, without prompting, arranged a water-carrying line from the well in the courtyard; the bath was filled within ten minutes. While Scrivener watched, she made a show of modestly retreating into her private room.

Bull was, again, fast asleep in the tub when she emerged, his head flung long back, mouth hanging open. His violet-scented soap floated in the water over his belly, presumably where he'd dropped it. Endearingly, he'd folded his trousers and set them on the table near his neatly arranged dishes. It didn't seem appropriate to leave him alone. It felt—natural, to keep watch over him as he slept. To bear witness. This, the first peaceful rest he'd had in a time. His entire body would be a prune when he woke.

Her stomach gave a piteous growl. All he had left her to eat was a few rolls and half a bottle of wine, but what appetite she'd had when she ordered them, she had lost in their argument. She stared at them, and felt the first pangs of a headache stretching dully at the back of her skull. To make matters worse, she yawned. It was barely noon, she could _not_ be tired, and Josephine Montilyet did not _nap_. So she rang for a pot of coffee. 

For want of anything better to do, she went back to work, the scratching of her quill punctuated by his light, snuffling snores. When she finished her letters, she entered her receipts from the trip into her traveling ledger, and found that Cooper had run up extravagant tabs everywhere she'd gone. When she finished her ledger, she visited Scrivener's office to retrieve his account books, which he would have to submit for approval to one of Josephine's bookkeepers, anyway, but which would not be harmed by a bit more scrutiny. Everything in order.

She settled into Bull's armchair with a cup in one hand and a stack of Leliana and Cullen's mission reports in the other. They were barely relevant to her, but she'd been waiting for a peaceful moment to catch up on them. The coffee did nothing but fill her with an unwelcome, shaky energy, a jangling in her nerves; the reports were largely written by subordinates, and very dully, at that, but for her fellow advisors' sniping commentary in the margins.

Her eyes drifted shut, more than once. Fatigue was an animal gnawing at her bones. Leliana circled something one of Cullen's lieutenants had written and misspelled; Cullen had crossed her words out heavily, and, in his spindly, delicate, Chantry-taught handwriting, gave the definition of the term for Josephine and the Inquisitor's benefit. She missed the two of them. She _would_ miss them, when she left the Inquisition. They possessed what Josephine lacked: a gift for devoting themselves to a cause with their whole hearts, for pouring their entire beings into it, regardless of whether they agreed with the direction it took.

Like Bull, who wrinkled his nose in his sleep as though he'd smelled something awful, then resumed his snoring. He had—so far as she understood it, the outlines of the story having been told to her in drips and drabs by Vivienne—believed so much in his Qun that it used him until there was nothing left, had pledged himself to Lavellan and the Inquisition as the next-best thing, and watched over Josephine faithfully, on a mission he hated, for a bargain with a country he loathed, until she had broken that faith. She wasn't naïve enough to think she'd won it back entirely. _When you figure out what you want_ , indeed. She would go to the void before she let him drown himself in her, too.

"Hey," Bull said when he woke, his voice thick with sleep. He stretched, a magnificent unfurling that had every joint in his body cracking, and the motion sloshed water over the sides of the tub. "You're still here."

"Of course I am," Josephine said. The sun perched low in the sky—she’d lost track of the time, and the day had wandered into afternoon already. "I have piles of work to catch up with."

The words felt stilted. Formal. An exchange between strangers. Bull reached for the soap, which had drifted down to his toes, and rubbed it contemplatively between his palms, lathering them with a focused slowness. He had looked up from between her legs with the same concentration, as though there were nothing in the world more important. He washed himself thoroughly, unselfconsciously, as she watched.

She watched him wait for her to speak, soapy fingers rubbing behind his knee. A little irritation jittered along her nerves. Bull loved to beckon, to entice, to extend his hand and fall in with other desires. Never moving when someone else could. Retaining his advantage. She resisted the urge to scowl. 

She had been going about this all wrong, really. He _couldn't_ answer, her, even if he wished to try. The question she was asking was too enormous, and nothing in his experience had prepared him to even consider it. _What you want_ could span the whole of Thedas, and still fall into the sea.

"Do you know what it means to me?" Josephine asked. "When you say, 'I want what you want.'"

Bull looked up from cleaning between his toes. "Nope," he said. "Tell me."

"You remove yourself from the equation."

"That so?"

"It's effective, Bull, I'll give you that much," she said, and set the report that had been in her lap aside. "I become judge and petitioner. My rule, my law." She ticked each one off on her fingers. "All my effort."

"Sounds like a good deal to me." Bull prized a sliver of dirt out from beneath a toenail. "You should think about taking it, before you tear it up."

"I told you I have no interest in—dallying." The yawn rising in her promised to be enormous. She clenched her jaw for a moment, to stop it coming up. "I also have no interest in yanking a lover to and fro by the reins. I haven't the time or the patience."

It was a poor analogy, and the moment the words left her mouth she knew it. The brief glance he shot her was withering, but it only served to stoke her irritation. He scrubbed at the back of his neck. Rivulets of water drizzled down his back, running along the massive bow of his spine. Josephine laced her fingers together. She did not want to think of running her fingers along each knob and vertebra. Her lips, tracing the lines of his scars. Her tongue. The next glance he shot her—speculative. He knew exactly what he was doing.

"I get it," Bull said. "I do. We can go through everything you can't handle until you find what you're looking for."

"This isn't about _me_ ," Josephine snapped. Her stomach was a knot: hunger, and a curious anger, at herself, for wanting this, at him, and his implacable disagreement. "You still haven't answered my question."

Bull sighed, then, and her blood caught fire and boiled. _Poor Josie,_ it said, _she just doesn't get it_. "Look," he said, "whatever you decide, I'll be good. You want to keep it quiet, sneak around, we can do that. You want to shout it from the battlements at Skyhold, we can do that. I'm just not interested in starting a game neither of us wants to play."

"I can't think of a better word to describe what we're doing now."

"No." Bull was firm. "It's just honesty from the beginning." He paused, to let that sink in, like a blade. "So you don't get tied up in the middle, in something you never asked for. _I_ don't have time for that."

That—was fair, at least. He'd been needling at it since he arrived. What he had no trouble demanding was complete and utter truthfulness. If Josephine hadn't bowed to this demand, nothing more would have been possible: he would have sent her off once more, he would have been lost to her. And he knew it.

"So," he began, and brought a handful of water up to his face to wash it off, as though he'd somehow _finished the argument,_ "when you figure it out—"

She cut him off without a second thought: "You simply surrender to what they desire?" Her tone had the desired effect—he turned his head to look at her, a droplet of water falling from the end of his nose. "How disappointing."

He stared at her, with a face as unreadable as stone, and said nothing.

"You wanted my honesty," Josephine said, without so much as a blink. “A mediocre arrangement, at best.” 

When he finally spoke, it was as though he'd shrugged off a blow. "I'd get my share out of it. Don't kid yourself."

"A deal needs two sides. You're not taking a _share_ at all."

"All you see is give and take." His tone was slow, deliberate, as though she couldn't hear him properly. "A real businesswoman. I'm not giving up anything, of whatever sad tale you've got spinning in your head."

The way he said it pricked at her temples. She resisted the urge to rub the heels of her hands against her eyes, heavy as they were. 

Bull’s observations on Sertorius after their first meeting, shared under the baking sun, had impressed her, reassured her: _He thinks he can play you. He doesn’t know a thing about you._

He hadn’t. Now, as Bull tried to smooth their argument over—as though she were a rumpled sheet under his big hand, she thought, _Do you?_

"You settle," she repeated, just as bluntly, and watched the carved lines of his face. He gave away nothing. 

Had she expected anything less? Bull made do. A piece of his Qun, perhaps, holding him tight in its grip, but also an untouched, integral part of who he was. The simplest, barest component of not being alone—the need to care for another person, whether to protect or pleasure them— was isolated, compartmentalized, and made to serve for every part of the whole. Earnestness, devotion, trust, and care all in one. He had made it his only tool, and by default, it erased anything else that _might_ be.

"It's just how it works for me," Bull said, finally. He'd set the soap aside. "It's what I need."

"I made you yield to my will once. Because of it, you spent days in terrible pain. Under horrific conditions. Completely alone."

He snorted. "Yeah, Josie. I was there."

"So you can't expect me to just—take this."

"You didn't seem to have any problem _taking_ it in that room."

In her mind—as she imagined hundreds of times, when faced with condescending nobles, snide soldiers, obstructive functionaries drunk on what little power they had—she threw her coffee cup at him. Tore her reports to shreds. Swept everything off the nearest table, then overturned it. _You will take this seriously. You will take_ me _seriously._ A momentary indulgence in her head, always, but one she felt perilously close to making a reality. Instead, she laid a hand on the upholstered arm of Bull’s chair, and waited for him to finish being foolish. 

"I'm not a packhorse for your guilt," Bull went on, matter-of-fact. "You screwed up, sure. It was bad. I got over it. Your turn."

"You throw yourself at my feet. What a gift," Josephine said, aware of how high her voice rose. Thank the Maker she'd sent Scrivener and company off. "I suppose your other paramours thought so.” 

Bull shrugged. “Sure, but everyone needs—” 

Now the back of her neck flushed white-hot, fanned down her spine. Another mouthful of lecturing on his expertise in _need_ and she would combust, and take not only him but the entire inn with her. “Why buy baubles or gold when you can just give yourself? How _selfless_ of you _,_ to make them so rich."

He only raised his eyebrows and replied, “What about when we got here? Me falling in line. Following your every step. You didn’t lose any sleep over it.”

“It matters now.” 

“Convenient,” Bull said, with the tiniest shrug of his shoulder. 

“You would cheat me,” she snapped. 

The whole room shifted. An imperceptible tension in his back, a slight tightening of his jaw, or perhaps he finally understood her. But Josephine could only stand a moment of silence. 

"It’s only a distraction," she said, and made no effort to soothe the sharpness in her voice. "Gilt and mirrors. You know precisely what you want, and—perhaps you don’t think I can provide it, or that no one truly can. " He blinked. She took advantage of his surprise and barreled on: "If you want my honesty, my affections—they're _yours,_ Bull. But you must offer me the same, or the deal is off.” 

A single soap bubble, lingering on the surface of Bull’s bathwater, popped against the edge of the tub. It was the only movement in the room until Josephine exhaled, careful not to sigh. Her nails dug themselves into the wooden arm of the chair. Not one of his muscles twitched. And she wondered if finally— _finally_ —he was listening. She always had Bull’s attention. His ear was another matter. 

“You rigged the scale. What’s between us—tilts.” Her voice did not hitch. She made sure of it. “I do not accept.” 

Ultimatums so rarely worked in practice. Had she not been run so ragged by the day, a more delicate plan might have presented itself. But he had asked for honesty, and it was on his head if he expected a handkerchief instead of a battering ram. 

"You'd just walk away," Bull said. It wasn't a question. He already knew. 

"Of course," she said. His resignation threw her; she made sure not to let it show. "It is not good enough. It's not worthy of me." Even as her headache panged at her temples, and lightheadedness made the room wobble. "No—no. It's not worthy of _you_."

Bull flinched.

Had she blinked, she might have missed it. Perhaps it was the sheer physical toll of the last few days on his body, but there it was: a tell. She could scarcely believe it, but she had no time to let it lie. A man whose entire being was scrupulously ordered, who never made a motion out of turn—to let this go unnoticed would have been the same as giving up. Unacceptable.

"Tell me the truth, Bull," she said, and knew she turned the knife. Her mouth was dry. "No more deflection. No more playing. If you can’t be—genuine—with me, about what you require, then it must end."

He pursed his lips. Looked thoughtful. "Sure," he said. As though nothing had changed. 

He stood up in the tub. It made an enormous splashing sound, suds falling off him as he used the sides for balance. The water sliding off him erased his scars, the thick lines and rough patches. He seemed new again, just for an instant, in smooth, stone-grey skin that loved him better. 

And as he carefully stepped out, taking care not to slip, Josephine was sure it was over. Their paths diverged here. He would go into the bedroom, get some well-deserved sleep, and in a day or two they would sail home. The thought pressed against her throat like a hand, made it impossible to breathe at all.

The familiar taste of dread filled her mouth as she watched him. Each movement, matter-of-fact and undisturbed, revealed nothing. She willed her heart to stop pounding, the headache crawling at the edges of her awareness to cease; her traitorous body did not obey. Her frustration at him, her _fury_ at how he’d allowed this to extinguish itself, did not diminish, and her confidence, right and true as she knew herself to be, was nothing like reassurance. 

She could not breathe, but she no longer required air. Every inch of her body was held tightly by her self-control. She wanted to wrap her fingers around each of his horns and shake him until he realized what a fool he was for letting this slip through his fingers. She wanted to rail at him, to break his passivity over her knee. To hold his tongue between her fingers until he learned not to speak to her like every other person in her company, convinced he must know better. 

Then Bull turned his head, a few droplets of water dripping from the tip of his chin and padded over. Steady, heavy steps, but slow. 

"Genuine," Bull said, as though rolling the word around in his mouth. Tasting it. 

He had lost the worst of his wobble—food, sleep, and a soak in the bath had done their work. He made no effort to cover himself, other than folding his arms across his chest, and went to one knee before her, settling his weight onto his left leg. Bathwater puddled under his feet, ran in little rivers down his thighs. Hunched over in bed, she’d forgotten how he could draw himself up tall as a mountain, how his shoulders filled the room.

Josephine could not explain it, but she knew his gaze as he looked her up and down. A soft, indelicate pass—just as his callouses snagged against the fabric of her dress when he plucked at her buttons. Appraising, if it was generous. Solving her as one untangled a knot, more like. 

She wondered if he found her small, dwarfed in his enormous chair. She did not feel small. Instead, she stared back up at him and did not waver. Not even when he turned his cheek to her. Not even when he opened his mouth and spoke. 

"Go ahead," he said. "Hit me." 


	5. Fond Skin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A resolution. Josephine twists the knife. Bull underestimates his worth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're here! We made it! Thanks for taking this journey into the ethics of questionable campaign donations with us. S/o to Katie for making sure we don't mess up too terribly, and thank you all for reading and leaving great feedback. We hope you enjoy our final installment.

She wasn't going to do it.

One glance at her told Bull everything Josephine needed—put aside the verbal fencing, and she sat rock still in his chair, every muscle cinched in on itself. More than holding on. Gripping. Cup of coffee, drained. A stack of papers on the table next to her. Her over-bright eyes, fixed on his face intently, trying not to wander. She openly stared at him. Her tight shoulders winding her spine into a perfect angle. Not a stutter in her breathing. Hands, clenched in her lap. She was probably only telling him half of what really felt: born negotiators kept their trump card tucked away until the last possible moment. 

She wanted to lecture, tell him all the ways she'd figured this out and figured him out and knew the course forward. But her body, curled up into a fist, told him everything instead. She was past tired. He'd slept, she hadn't. He'd eaten what he could, she hadn't. She wasn't in any shape to have this discussion. 

But she'd started it. 

His knee slid a little on the wet floor, as he watched her. She wouldn't do it. A qunari could always use a knock in the head to get his mind right. A woman like Josie, bound up in more knots than he knew how to tie, should unwind, and wind up, and unwind again. But it had taken days just to get her to take the pins out of her hair in front of him—all the fucking in the room aside. It wasn't enough. But the least he could do was offer a cheek. 

Her stare sharpened into a glare, the corner of her lip curling. She wasn't a fighter. She didn't know how not to telegraph her movements, how to hide the shift in her weight when she drew the arm on his blind side back. Still, she wouldn't do it. He'd gotten up close and personal with exactly what was _in her_. He'd found a lot of stuff he liked. But this wasn't one of those things. 

They were sliding back. He could feel it, like the earth shifting under his knees. Everything pulling back into its proper place, buttoned up, and erased. It made something in his stomach jerk, suddenly, and his dry mouth opened. 

"Hit—" he said, and never got the last word out, for the crack of her soft hand across his face. 

The sound rang through the room. 

"Shit," Bull said, his hand going up to his cheek. It barely stung. She was no Cassandra, wielding a wooden switch she'd cut herself out of a mountain sapling, but who was? A slap was a slap.

"There: what you want," Josie said. "That awful, forbidden thing you think I will outright refuse you, because I abhor violence. Shall we move to the next item on the list?"

Bull blinked. The feel of her hand had already faded from his worn cheek. 

"Well?" she repeated, impatient. She folded her hands in front of her. He couldn't tell if it was to disguise a tremor or not, from excitement, or victory, or both. 

He felt the corner of his mouth widen and crack, and it wasn't until he let his hand fall from his face that he realized he was smirking. Only the pinched look on her face stopped him from chuckling out loud. "Not great," he said. "But your idea of heavy lifting is one of those fancy quill pens made with turkey feathers. We can work on it." 

She sighed, a tiredness to split hairs at the root. "I see. Another game. More jokes. Wonderful." 

"But that's why you did it, right?" he asked, curiously. Earlier, the hypocrisy in it would have pissed him off—now he was more curious than anything else. She'd earned that. "You're a winner."

Josephine looked down at him—her brow knitted together, a line forming against her forehead. "Yes. It took everything short of throttling you in the bath to extract that from you." _There_ was an image. Her hands wouldn't even fit around his throat. You could get the same effect by pressing your fingers real hard into the points of somebody's jaw, though—the panic, not the choking. It didn't take a whole lot of force. It would take an act of nature to get him hard again, but he felt a definite twitch. 

"You asked," she said. "So I delivered." 

"Because you think you owe it to me." 

" _No._ " When her hand rose again, a muscle in his gut tensed in anticipation. The sting was gone, but all too easy to recall. The sound. Instead, she tipped his head up by the chin again, her fingertips unyielding. He could wrench away if he tried. It'd be nothing. Instead, as she found his gaze, looked down to meet him straight on, he didn't have a clue as to what was going to come out of mouth next. 

"I did it because I wanted to," Josephine said calmly. "I would have done more, if you needed it. I would have." A pause. "Did you think I was lying?" 

Bull cleared the dust out of his throat and shrugged. "Uh." 

She raised her eyebrows, released him from her fingers. She considered him for a moment, and then admitted, "And you didn't think I could do it. I won't pretend that didn't, ah, hasten the attempt." 

He'd never have guessed at how deep that particular vein of spite ran. _Impossible_ was a thrown gauntlet. Making the Inquisition respectable, getting supply lines to Skyhold up and running—negotiating a deal with a Tevinter with a Tal-Vashoth hovering behind her, slapping the shit out of Bull, or trying to. It was all the same in her eyes. Made the world simpler. Gave her something to point herself at, like the gap between them could be closed by knocking down this particular barrier. But that brought them back to the point, laughs aside, which was: 

"All right. So you slapped me once," Bull said. "That doesn't prove anything. Would you do it whenever I asked?" 

"Don't insult us both by pretending this is only about what we want in the bedroom," Josie said sharply. 

"Isn't it?" he asked. 

Josie—Josie, who couldn't sit still for this long, not in the state she was in, grabbed her empty mug and turned it around in her hands. "You're still _playing_. I have had enough of games to last me my entire life. I won't have them elsewhere." 

He put a hand on her knee. Her thigh tensed under his grip. The cheap way to finish this would be to go upward, part her legs—she wouldn't say no, he was sure of that much—and eat her out until she stopped thinking, stopped trying to take him apart. Until she went slack and agreed to whatever he wanted, which was, _Don't think about what Iron Bull wants_. 

What Iron Bull wanted was impossible, for a start. "You're tired," he said, instead. 

Josie frowned. "So are you. I don't see how it's relevant." 

"What happened with Sertorius," he began, vaguely. "All that crap. It wrung me out. Wrung you out, too." 

"The point, Bull." Her nostrils flared. He almost had to suppress a grin. Raw irritation almost looked good on her. "Make one." 

"You heard about me and Cassandra, I bet." 

A look of confusion passed over her face, before she realized he wasn't speaking of sexual escapades. "After we stormed Adamant," she said. "She beat you half to death." 

Now he did smile. "Josie," he said, "a little credit. Come on." His thumb pressed the softness of the inside of her thigh, swiped back and forth. 

"She beat you silly, then." She replaced the mug back on the side table with a little _clink_ , and touched his wrist as though to say, _stop._ "A training exercise, two soldiers beating their chests in bravado—" 

"No." Enough to cut her off at the pass. "I asked her to do it." 

Her brow furrowed. He could see the wheels turning, palming this new piece of information in her head back and forth like new currency. "I—well. I'd heard a rumor," was all she offered in return. 

"Sure," he said. He toyed, for a moment, with trying to tease it out of her—but there was no way she'd understand what happened to him inside the Fade, what it meant to be bare-assed and belly-up inside your worst nightmare. "I wasn't doing great. Had to get my edge back." 

"Yes." She nodded, and made a little, impatient sound like clearing her throat, as though he'd maybe forgotten she was there. "What does that have to do with me?"

"You need it, too," he said, and she went still. 

He had to move quick, or he'd lose her. "Sometimes I need to get hit," he said. "When I'm low. That's part of it. You already got to see that, squirreling around in my own shit in that room. So what do you with that?" He squeezed her thigh again, felt her fingers tighten around his wrist in reflex. She didn't reply. "All it takes is somebody with an arm and with the guts to make it happen. To fix it." He made sure he had her eye. "That's it. And nobody's the wiser."

"Please," Josie said, " _do_ tell me what I need." 

Bull didn't have to tell her she'd been tied in knots the whole trip, since before they even stepped on the boat. The Inquisitor had a way of laying out her expectations like the tamrassans did before a beating—a cudgel, a whip, and a knife, all laid out pretty on a table. You chose, as though you had a choice. And that was before he showed up, lumbering in on a delicately wrought plan, in the works for a year, with orders to sabotage. 

He risked bowing down and pressing a kiss to the inside of Josie's knee. "Somebody who can take whoever you throw at them."

"And anyone would do, I suppose. You could find any number of soldiers willing to beat you, for the pleasure of it—even Cassandra." She'd let him go, plucked his hand off her thigh. Her grip was firm. "If you wish us to be nothing but a diversion for one another, you may as well say so. But somehow, you still haven't told me what you _want_. And don't insult me by saying it _doesn't matter_." 

Born negotiator. He hadn't held up his end of the bargaining. He _was_ going to lose her. And why should it matter? 

She'd seen him at his worst. 

The thought itself struck him, tilted his face up into the blinding light, just as her hand had done only a few moments before. They weren't touching any longer—maybe his new disadvantage cleared the way. No opportunity to distract, divert them both. 

The truth, at the end of the day, was simple. Nobody was interested in the Iron Bull past what he could offer them. He liked it that way. Kept things in order, and kept him sharp. It wasn't wrong to get his kicks from taking his partners apart, piece by piece, and figuring out the stick to make them whole again. And he was good at it, for by the south's standards, at least—any tamrassan worth her salt could turn him inside out, remold him, like a piece of wet clay. But that was different. 

Others had tried, maybe. What passed for "trying" for most people wasn't worth the mud under his boots. They saw what Bull wanted them to. _Good at what he does. Good to me._ Not a bad thing. But underneath that, his rage, all the nasty uses he could put Ben-Hassrath training to, couldn't be exposed to the people he cared about. You took them to people like Cassandra, who had looked so many monsters straight in the eye that they bored her to tears, and let them beat them back into line. And that was as far as it went. 

So here they sat, Josephine two minutes away from leaving his sorry ass in Cumberland, because she'd done the work already, and he hadn't seen it for what it was. Because, despite all that, she wanted to know _more._

"You did it already," Bull said, and sat back on his heels. 

Silence. "What?" 

"In the room." He jerked his head west. She bristled—she thought he meant something to do with fucking, even though that was part of it. "You didn't come just to ride the Bull, or to make yourself feel better." He considered this. "Maybe at the beginning." 

"As we've discussed." 

"It made you come back," he agreed. "It's not why you stayed." 

"Of course not." Josephine's face faded from offended petulance, to—something else. 

"Somebody else might have written Krem, gotten some other people to deal with it." She nearly had, but that didn't matter. It hadn't been done. "Or stuck around to see the show." 

Josephine didn't dignify it with further evidence of her good behavior."You were hurt," she said after a moment's thought. "And afraid. There was—very little to be done, and for a long while, I was by no means helpful." 

She opened her mouth, and closed it. Bull waited. 

"You didn't deserve to go through it alone," she said, finally. "No one does, but certainly not you." She shook her head a little. "You could have. I'm sure you've done it, in some horrible story I'll hear about one day. But not this time. Not—it would have split me in half, to leave you there." 

A pause, before Bull said, "That's what I want." She stared at him, before he clarified, with a quiet clearing of his throat. "I don't care if you're any good at it or not," he said. "But when I'm low, I want you to try." 

"Very well," she said, and settled back in the chair, drumming her fingers on the arm. "Perhaps I'll apply to Seeker Pentaghast for lessons in the staff, should you need it." 

That'd get tongues wagging. Whether she minded talk, what they'd do if it hurt her reputation—that was crap they could deal with later, when they were in the real world. "Hey, from what I've seen," Bull said, "you know exactly what to do when somebody gives you a staff."

"I— _really_ , Bull," Josie said. "I only needed my hand, if memory serves."

But she was smiling again. She cradled his face in both of her hands and brought him up to her for a slow kiss, a leisurely kiss; he tangled his fingers in her hair, massaged the back of her neck until all the tension drained out of her body. He could do this for her. Give her respite, because he knew she'd do the same for him, without flinching. 

"You need some sleep," he said, once they'd paused long enough to speak. His knees were killing him.

"No, I need a bath," she said, into his cheek. Then she pulled away and got up from the chair, visibly unsteady, pulling her dress over her head as she went, unlacing her stays, and clambering over the side of the tub. "Oh, Maker, that's cold."

"And dirty."

He hobbled into her bedroom while she poured bath water over her head with the help of a bowl. Here was her second wardrobe. Her mountain of valises and bags were piled haphazardly in the corner. The room smelled like clean linens, and he opened the window. A breeze brought fresh air inside, and he took a breath. The smell from the boarding-house still lingered under his nose. It would for a while. Sweat and stink. 

Bull sat down on the bed, and then lay down, resting his head back against the pillow. He only meant to close his eyes for a second—it was early afternoon at the latest, and he'd slept enough already—but he jerked awake with a start when the door to their suite opened in the next room. Josephine's voice, a soft murmur at the door. Speaking to Scrivener, judging by the low, hesitant cadence. _I meant it,_ she was saying. _You have the day off, too. Iron Bull will be enough to protect me. If Leliana takes exception,_ I'll _deal with her._ Then the door shut, and she walked past the threshold. She wore a deep blue dress, one he'd seen before, edged with lace at the collar. The skirt swirled around her legs, light as air, made her look like one of those spun sugar sculptures you saw sometimes at fancy Orlesian parties. 

The chair to her desk scraped on the floor. He could just see her shadow, hear the sound of letters in her hand. He propped himself up, one elbow in the fine Rivaini cotton sheets. Better than what he had in his room. He'd bet anything she traveled with her own.

"Hey," he said, not unkindly. "What are you up to?" 

A pause in the rustling. 

"I can hear you. C'mere." 

After a moment, and the chair creaked as she stood up. When she appeared in the doorway, a still-wet braid hanging over her shoulder, leaving a damp spot on her dress. "You were asleep," she said. 

He patted the bed next to him and she came over, sitting carefully at the edge as she slid off her little satin slippers. It was as polite as using the correct fork at the dining table, the way she pulled her legs into bed after her. She only hesitated once before he tugged at the gauzy edge of her gown, and she rolled into his side, knees nudging against his thigh. 

When she rested her head on his chest, he played with the wet plait, winding it around his fingers. The room held the slow and steady quiet of an exhale. He had a vague memory of her raising her head, pressing a kiss to the divot of his chin, muttering _sleep well_ , but he couldn't say. 

Most nights, his head hit the pillow, and he fell into a black sleep, or else he forgot what he'd dreamed about right when he woke up. But tonight, a few images drifted in and out, strung together by lengths of thread. A wide field of wheat in the hot sun, sweat running down his back. A dock—not Cumberland's, but maybe Jader with its high arches, or the white stone of Dairsmuid. And underneath it all was soft rocking, the kind you couldn't feel at all if you got used to it. The sea, maybe. But Bull wasn't much for the water. 

He woke up slowly, in the small hours of the morning, with Josie sprawled out on her belly next to him. She'd changed into one of her nightgowns, at some point—slept for a while, probably, and gone right back to work. That was fine. Her job was important to her. She had ten thousand things weighing her down. If he'd gotten two full days of her attention, it was more than enough. The nightgown was twisted around her legs, hiked up to her thighs; a cool breeze blew in through the window, and she shifted in murmured complaint. 

"Hey," he said into her ear. Her hand went to his face, and she shoved him away with another grumble: Josephine Montilyet, who everybody at Skyhold knew was up and about sat the asscrack of dawn, no matter what, wasn't a morning person. She rolled onto her back and looked up at him with sleepy eyes. Her hair was wild, like they'd been at it all night. 

"Good morning, Bull," Josie croaked. She rolled out of bed and went to the washbasin in the corner to scrub at her face. Bull stayed where he was. Here was something the Qun had set aside, all those centuries ago, and which he hadn't known he was missing until he'd come to the mainland: sitting back in bed, and watching somebody's morning routine. When Josie was done with her face, she peered at herself in the mirror, felt at the skin around her eyes, ran a finger over each brow. She pulled her hair into a knot at the base of her neck. She picked at one of her moles, idly, and then, and only then, did she return to bed. 

"Sleep well?" he asked. He didn't do a whole lot of waking up next to people. 

"Sound as stone," said Josie, leaning back against the headboard.

Sitting there, her nightgown rucked up a little around her hips, the lace hem laying across her thigh. A few dark freckles dotted her left leg, just above the round cap of her knee. He hadn't noticed before, last time he'd had her naked in a bed, and he started wondering what else he'd missed. "Heard you giving Scrivener a talk," he said, and rolled onto his stomach next to her. His hand came to rest on her thigh, arm wrapped around her leg, elbow parting her knees. His thumb examined each little mark. 

She nodded. "He planned on standing sentinel at the door all night and this morning." She adjusted her legs to make room for his arm. "Unnecessary." 

"Dedicated." 

"Mhmm. As though we're not already surrounded by Leliana's people. Stacked floor to ceiling. Like cordwood." 

His hand slid down to squeeze the inside of her thigh again; the flesh was warm, filled his hand with familiar weight. "Seems to be a thing with us," he said. 

She gave him a look. She wasn't ready to joke about it; she was far too polite. But he liked seeing her this way—Josephine spent all her time in perpetual action. Even sitting at a desk she buzzed like a wasp. He'd seen her that way before, the few times she'd called him into her office. Hands, always moving, when she talked or when she wrote, ink spots on her fingers. The wheels in her head turning too fast to only be considering him and whatever was coming out of his mouth. 

Here, she merely sat with him, somewhere between not-quite-awake and remembering she had a host of duties on her plate today. Or just—setting them aside. Better, even, than the morning routine. He didn't know anyone who got to see this. Josephine, at rest. 

Bull wanted to keep her there. Do the impossible. Make time—last. "So no audience," he said, and let his hand stroke further up her thigh. 

"Of all the things to be new," she replied, and there it was. A smile. She fidgeted with the tip of one of his horn. "To be unexplored territory." 

"Gotta start somewhere." His fingers brushed between her legs, just enough to feel the curls of her hair against his knuckles. "Good opportunity." 

 

Her hips canted a little, chasing the touch. "I thought you couldn't, ah, ‘get it up' until the next Blight," she said, and he chuckled. 

"Nah." Bull bent his head, rested his cheek on her knee. Her hand slipped down to the crown of his head, her nails tracing against his scalp. He parted her folds with a slow stroke. On the next pass, he rolled her clit against the tip of his finger, once, twice, until he heard her puff out a slow breath through her nostrils. Her spine went loose against the headboard. 

He pulled away, and her fingers stilled on his scalp. "You're good to go, though," he said, before she could protest, and offered her his hand. "Unless—"

Josephine plucked his hand from the air and drew his finger into her mouth without comment. Her tongue ran along the thick callous at the tip before she let him have it back again. 

She guided his hand back between her legs, the soft material of her nightgown sliding over his knuckles. "You were saying?" 

But she was still sleepy. She seemed content enough to relax, made no move to help him undo the buttons on her nightgown, but lay back, soft and pliant, watching his every move with a clear gaze. He hadn't had the presence of mind to do this, before: to take his time. See what got her excited. See what'd wipe every thought of the day she had ahead from her mind. 

The side of her neck—she'd liked that, back in the room, as little time as they'd spent on the foreplay, and when his lips touched her she shivered and held his face to her, murmured for him not to leave a mark. Collarbones—lukewarm response. He kissed his way down to her breasts, feeling her the hammering of her heart as he went. The soft press of his mouth didn't do much, but grazing his teeth just so along the curve of her flesh made her suck in a harsh breath, a shudder that he felt all the way to her ankles. 

"Bull," she panted, pulling at one of his horns back to force him to look up at her, "for Andraste's sake, this is all very thorough—"

"I've got you," Bull said. When he pressed a kiss to the scar on her ribs, she stiffened and froze. "Want me to not do that?" 

Josephine pursed her lips, nearly glared down at him. "It's nothing, compared to you—or Leliana—Cassandra"—he dragged his lips down her soft belly, got his shoulders up between her legs, and watched her take a second to remember what she meant to say—"but it's unsightly. On me."

He let one of his hands rest on her stomach, not close enough to brush up against the rough patch of the scar, but to steady her. He'd heard every adage in the book about scars—romantic drivel whispered by moonlight, meant sincerely by lovers who didn't understand much. _It only shows you survived the worst._ That one was popular. _The flesh grows back, better, stronger._ A better one. Neither of those would work.

"I bet you've tried a hundred things to get rid of it," he said. He nipped at the inside of her thigh, liked the way her legs tensed around him. "Every poultice in the book. Some of the ones that aren't. Lady Vivienne, you know, she brews up a mean one, with..."

"Prophet's laurel," Josephine said grimly.

"Smells nice. Works wonders on everything else. She gave me it for this one, here," Bull said, and patted his shoulder blade, where he'd taken a dragon's fire in the process of chucking an unconscious Sera, armor and all, into a cave, where they could hide until it got bored and went off to try to kill something else. The dragon had taken three days to get bored; it hadn't fit through the mouth of the cave, but its hatchlings could just fine. He'd been laid up at camp for a month recovering from that one, halfway out of his mind on tincture of blood lotus. It hadn't healed well. It still ached, sometimes. Still, he hadn't had to buy a round at the Herald's Rest for a week after he returned. "Didn't do a thing," he went on. "Nothing _to_ be done, she said. I don't know. Sometimes scars stake out their territory. No desire to disappear. Like the skin wants them, needs them to stay. And that's the way it goes." 

Her eyes lit up a little in recognition. "I—yes," she said before falling into a thought. He hadn't expected that to take, so he squeezed her thigh a little, encouraging her to go on. 

"We call it 'fond skin,'" Josie said, slowly. "Unhealable, and happy for the scars. It's… from a poem." 

"Yeah. That's good." Bull kissed her navel. " _Fond skin._ So—you don't want me to see it, touch it, I won't. But as far as unsightly goes, Josie, I'm your expert." He tapped his missing eye. She groaned. His hand slid down her belly until he could massage her clit lazily under the pad of his thumb. Her breath hitched, and he grinned. 

She smelled good—heady, salty, and despite her protests at taking his time, wet as morning dew. But she could take more. He nudged forward, pressing his tongue into her cunt, feeling the tips of her nails bite into scalp—and that was the end of talking for most of the morning. 

She dozed for a little while, after—her head cushioned on his belly, his hand stroking her hair. The first time she came energized her, and Bull set to work three times more before she could entertain the thought of work, of piling all her correspondence into bed next to him. But eventually she rose out of the bed, her hair truly wild and fanning down her back, as she got herself into a robe, and wandered into the next room to begin the day. 

 

He heard her ringing for breakfast. He heard her open the door and consult with Miller—all the agents would have come back by now—so much for not having an audience—and heard Cooper's low voice interject something, then Fletcher's laugh, then Bel's embarrassed yelp. 

When she returned, he saw she'd pulled up her hair into a messy bun at the crown of her head, a sheaf of letters bound in butcher's twine under her arm, and holding a few envelopes from the day before in her fingers. 

"I told them you were all right," she said from the threshold, and then added, in an awful, flat accent, Orzammar by way of a Rialto fish market, "'Tell the big guy we expect him on his feet by tomorrow.'"

Bull hadn't known it was possible to be that bad at impressions. He stared at her, dumbfounded, while she set whatever she hadn't finished yesterday on the bed between them. Then he cleared his throat. "I guess I've got privileged access now." He gave it a beat. "And I get to see your letters, too." 

"Please," she said, with a roll of her eyes, tucking her legs under her comfortably. But she made no attempt to stave him off when he glanced at her papers, leaned into her space. An already opened note from Leliana, something about calling on a contact in Cumberland before they went back to Skyhold, but that was nothing compared to the next letter she plucked from the bedspread. 

_To Lady Montilyet_ , read the outside, in a sprawling, weak-wristed handwriting, _and Company._

They both looked at it, until Bull leaned back against the headboard, adjusted one of the goose-down pillows shoved behind him. "Read it," he said. 

She offered him the letter like a saucer over a tea table. "Are you sure?" she asked. "It's yours as much as mine." 

He waved his hand. "Nah," he said. "Do it out loud."

The sound of paper being delicately torn, and then Josephine unfolded the contents of the envelope. She cleared her throat delicately, and said—no attempt at a Tevinter accent, fortunately—" _My lady Montilyet. My previous note went unanswered, and your charmingly bucktoothed manservant_ —Scrivener?— _rebuffed me when I came to visit it. He cited an attack of the headaches, of all things. If this is the truth—and you were, as they say in the south, ‘laid up' with the vapors—I enclose a phial of my own mother's curative powder._ " 

The glass phial was smaller than any of his fingers. When it tumbled out of the envelope, Bull caught it before it could touch the bedspread, or Josie, or both. He set it on the bedside table, on the farthest corner. "Nobody's touching that," he said, and Josephine didn't argue. 

She did read ahead, though—a line or two, by the movement of her eyes, and then she fell tight-lipped. He reached forward, slid his fingers into the crook of her elbow, and squeezed. She flinched—forgot he was there, probably—and shook her head. One of her most determined wrinkles parted the soft space between her brows. "Out loud," she said. "Very well." 

" _However, I suspect it was not, and that you were scouring Cumberland for your vanished oxman, and, well, I can hardly hold sentiment against the young. Or foolishness, for that matter. One will forget to close the gate._ " It was nothing Bull hadn't heard before, but Josephine swallowed after that line, her voice going cold by the end. But she gathered herself quickly, without his prompting, and went on:

" _Our solicitors have finished their battles, with or without our attendance. A copy of the contract has been sent to you for final review and approval. I propose a signing at the Diamond Lass, where we first began our dance. To think—you didn't trust me enough to take food from my hand! How we've enjoyed one another's company, my dear. I do look forward to following the career of such a promising young diplomat, once we've parted ways._

" _However, there is one matter of deep concern to me—_ and you can guess the rest," she said, scanning the rest of the letter. 

"Keep going," Bull said. _Promising young diplomat,_ his ass. Lavellan might have killed Florianne, way back at Halamshiral, but Josephine dropping a few words in Gaspard's chevaliers' ears when she thought nobody was looking had ended a civil war. Vivienne had told him all about it when she'd gotten back.

"You hardly need more reasons to hate him." 

"Come on," he said. "I can't kill him, but it'll make it better when you take all his money." 

Josie raised an eyebrow. " _One matter of deep concern to me: I received a dispatch from Lady Magister Tilani ordering me to remove one particular stipulation from our list of concessions._ _Dear girl, it is not too late to reconsider. Celene's swamp witch has served you in good stead, I'm sure, but in the world to come, you will need more."_

Bull tilted his head. "Magisterium's not enough, huh?"

"House Sertorius is not prestigious, only wealthy," she recited with a wave of her hand. "A pawn in the Magisterium's games, not a player. He shunned his family's traditional allies to join Magister Tilani, and now he's gambled his fortunes on the Inquisition. He has some questionable investments in Rivain; it shouldn't be difficult to redeem a few favors and ensure he doesn't receive a return on them. Then there's the matter of raising rice tariffs to Antiva, and he has a marriage arranged between his nephew and the daughter of an baronesse whose mines supply the Inquisition with silverite…." She trailed off, self-conscious. "I know you don't care whether I ruin him, Bull. But I will." 

Bull nodded, like the games she played were relevant to him, these days. It was the kind of thing he might have passed back to the Ben-Hassrath, in the reports he hadn't let Leliana find. Not anymore. "He'll wish he was dead by the time you're done with him. It's the next best thing." It wouldn't be half as satisfying as cutting Sertorius's head off, he wasn't going to stop her. People had killed people to save Bull, before—killing was easy. Josie could grind someone to dust with the snap of her tiny little fingers, and she was using all that power for _him_. If he could get a boner, he'd be at least halfway there.

Josie re-folded the letter and set it to the side, as though she were handling a dirty rag. "The letter goes on past that, of course," she said. "It's very snide. But we're not taking his group's money, Bull."

He blinked. "No good reason not to," he said, laced his fingers over his stomach, and watched Josephine's eyebrows shoot up to her hairline. 

"No good reason— _Bull._ " She turned herself on the bed so she could look him in the eye, and some of her letters crunched under her knee. "There's every reason in the world to let it go. It won't hurt me to part with it."

She'd been awfully calm, he thought, while reading the letter. Cold, maybe. Disturbed by Sertorius, and the oily residue his words left in the air, on the sheets and her fingers. But no anger. Just resignation. She'd decided this awhile ago. Maybe even back in the room. It was helping to hold her together. 

"I get what you're saying—it's a nice thing. Sweet," he added, after a moment's consideration. Kind of thing Krem would whistle at, and mutter, _Pretty gallant, chief_. _You always did like pink._ "Don't give it up on my account, though. You've got stuff to do." 

"You deserve better." 

He waved a hand. "It's a little more complicated than that, right?"

"He hurt you," she snapped, so sharply he realized whatever they'd worked through yesterday wasn't all she had to say on the subject. A mistake on his part, to think he'd run all the rage out of her. She wasn't done. Not by a long shot. "He tried to turn you into an animal, clawing at the walls." A pause, and her eyes narrowed. "To break you. To break _me._ " 

Bull exhaled, started to say, "Look—" but the look on her face stopped him. All hard lines. 

"No. I don't care how much gold it is. We obtained it at your expense. He can keep it." 

He sat up a little. She didn't think he was taking it seriously—trying to brush off what happened, and it was winding her up. He leaned forward over his lap, looked down at the pages of bile between them on the bedspread and said, calmly, "I get it. It's not easy."

"‘It's not _easy?_ " Josie repeated, voice incredulous. "Not easy? Getting from Skyhold to Cumberland without a two week detour into the bowels of Orzammar wasn't easy. Finding out where you'd run to in this wretched city wasn't easy." Her words came fast now, breathless. "Watching you writhe on that bed, knowing I'd sat across from the man who'd put you there for days, was—unspeakable."

Bull rested his hand on her ankle. "Yeah," was all he needed to say. His voice wasn't gentle about it. "I know." 

Her mouth tightened into a thin line, and she took a breath that rattled all the way down, and another. "I can't duel him out in the street for your honor," she muttered. "I can't make him pay with blood from his crime. But I can make him wish I'd picked up the knife instead." She met his eye, and gave him a nod worthy of any Charger in his service. "I don't need the money to do it." 

Bull let her breathe for a moment and said, "I know you can. Trust me." He made sure to look her dead in the eye. "But if we're going back, don't we want something to show for it?" 

She hesitated. She didn't like having her own words thrown back at her, and he had a feeling he'd get an earful for it later. But right now, she was listening. "I do," he said. "And if you can make him wish he'd never seen a sovereign before—it's better than stomping back to Skyhold empty-handed."

" _They_ offered it. A year ago, in return for a closer relationship with us. The Inquisition doesn't require it. We won't wither and die if we refuse it; have you seen our vault?" 

"Nope." He'd figured the Inquisition kept all their money safe in banks. No need to keep coin at hand when you had to import everything. But he didn't know the first thing about money, where Josie had spent her whole life counting coppers. 

"I'll show you," she said, with a fierce, proud, riled up glint in her eye. "When we return."

A different kind of fire. It took the edge off her guilt and anger. He'd take it. "We're going to have sex on a pile of money, aren't we." 

"Absolutely not," Josephine replied. "In any event—"

"Because if you're up for it, I'm up for it," Bull interrupted. He could see it now. Josie's hair fanned out on gold. "All we'd have to do is lay down a cushion, and—"

"In _any_ event," Josie said, louder, now, "my orders were to accept the funds if the group's demands weren't too onerous, or wouldn't be objectionable to Inquisitor Lavellan, and even without Sertorius trying to replace Lady Morrigan, I think the demands of the negotiations have placed enough of a strain on both of us, don't you? It's best to decline politely, while still keeping our relationship with the group intact. They've been valuable allies. Once they see what I've done to Sertorius, they won't think of crossing the Inquisition again." 

She made every effort to seem so calm and assured, so reasonable, as though she hadn't just expressed how bad she wanted to gut someone, if not for those principles of hers. In control again, like she knew how every piece of her game should be moved—like she herself made the sun rise every morning (and if you asked some of her people, they'd say she did), that if he'd been anyone else, the speech would have convinced him. Cowed him into bending to her will, even. But he could see the tightness in her jaw, the strain in her face. She had her hands in her lap, cupped and facing upward, one over the other. It was how novices to the Game in Orlais were taught not to fidget, so they didn't give away their feelings. 

"Now, if we're prepared to put this unpleasantness behind us," she continued, when he didn't say anything, "I'll draft my response to both Sertorius and Magister Tilani over breakfast—I've ordered us enough eggs to fill that gap in Skyhold's walls. Then we'll see about returning the bathtub, and I need to speak to Scrivener about...." She trailed off at the sight of his frown. "Is there a problem?" 

"Josie," Bull said. "Take the money." 

"Haven't you been listening? The Inquisition—"

"I'm not talking about the Inquisition. I mean me." He reached over and tugged her hands out of their careful pose. "Me," he said, "and you. We're walking out of this city. We're getting on that ship. And we're doing it with all the gold that ‘Vint has to offer. More, if you can bleed it out of him." 

Her eyes flashed. "He's given me no reason to sign the contract. _His_ job was to convince _me_ of the utility of an alliance with Magister Tilani's group, in the face of the Herald's thoughts on Tevinters." 

"We're a little past contracts." Bull ran his thumb over her knuckles. They were small as river pebbles, the valleys between them like satin. "Would you sit down with him for drinks in those magicked little glasses, at this point?" 

"Only to explain to him in no uncertain terms that I had no interest in further business with him. What would you have me do, Bull?" If he hadn't been holding her hand, he suspected she'd have folded her arms across her chest in a stubborn fit. 

"I dunno," he said, with a shrug. "It's your stage. You tell me." 

She made a petulant little sound under her breath. "Yes, yes—enter in a righteous fury over how he's mistreated you, demand recompense and blood—"

"Come on." He wasn't above a little goading. Not that it mattered. He could manipulate one person at a time, easy. Josie operated on a scale he couldn't fathom, tying whole countries in knots. "That stuff's easy. What you do takes _finesse._ " He stroked his thumb across the heel of her palm. "Put your back into it." 

"I'd tell him of my letter complaining of his conduct to Magister Tilani." She recited it almost by rote, like it was a letter she'd had hidden in a drawer, a back-up plan. "But what then? It's not as simple as making him think he has a chance of salvaging the deal, promising to save him from ruin if he sweetens the pot with his own money, _and_ his faction's money, _including_ recompense for our inconvenience—"

She cut herself off, all of a sudden. Bull waited, and watched the victory come to life. "That"—her hand tightened on his, and her face lit up with delight—"is not a horrible idea."

Her mind moved like lightning; the rest of the plan came together so quickly she'd probably forgotten he was there. "I'd only have to get ahead of his accusations of my soliciting a bribe when he realizes what I've done—but he will be ruined by the time he thinks to protest. Who could accuse the incorruptible Ambassador Montilyet of taking money for silence? She won't even draw a knife in her own defense." Her free hand tapped against her knee—a fidget, as though her fingers needed a quill. 

"That a yes?" He kissed the back of her hand, just as he heard a knock at the door. 

She scowled at him, a look with no heat. "Don't let it go to your head," she said, with a roll of her eyes that was better than a peck on his leathery cheek. 

"Either one?" he asked, and didn't let go of her hand until the knocking got more urgent, and she swatted him on the arm. 

Josie slid out of bed to answer the door. "And, please," she said, glancing back at him from the doorway, "don't think for a moment I don't know what you just did." 

"Wouldn't dream of it," Bull replied. 

So, breakfast. Josie came into the room with her writing board under her arm, an inkwell and quill tucked under her chin, along with the tray. She ate with one hand and drafted a letter to Sertorius with the other, and not a stray crumb of toast or bit of egg fell on the paper. No conversation, only focus. Bull felt more whole today, and steadier, but if he didn't have to leave her bed, he wouldn't. The silence was nice, not stiff, not cloying. She accepted his refills of her coffee cup with an abstracted nod.

"I did not enjoy the thought of telling Lavellan I'd failed," she said, once she'd set her lap desk aside. "She sent me here to do that. To teach me a lesson about the limits of my capabilities, I suppose."

One nudge, and he'd have her spilling her grievances about Lavellan. About her and Leliana being sidelined in favor of Cullen, and the direween his fingers and wiggling it. ct approach. It was a reflex. He'd already manipulated her once in the past hour; she wouldn't forgive him for doing it twice. "Sounds like somebody we know," Bull said, instead, taking one of her exposed toes bet

With a strangled noise, Josie pulled her foot back under her nightgown. 

"Oh," Bull said. "You're ticklish." His hand inched toward her foot. 

"No, I need to _work_ ," she said, and hopped out of the bed. "I need to get dressed—have Miller copy this letter out, she'll enjoy that. I'll leave Ser Belinda alone; Maker knows if she'll ever forgive me. Fletcher and Cooper—"

"Yeah, Josie, I got it." He waved her on. "Breakfast?"

They ate together, in bed—Josie muttered something about how the eggs were cooked a little too hard for her liking, but Bull shoveled them down like he was paid to do it. There was bread, too, warm to the touch. A pile of tomatoes fried in butter, dusted with bitter herbs and salt. Once he'd demolished his own eggs, and whatever was left of Josie's, she sat back against the headboard, pulling apart a roll, and they hatched a plan. 

*

It was easy, once they were on the same page. Like clockwork. She'd write a gracious, apologetic note, and summon Sertorius to the Diamond Lass. Josephine had wanted to bring him to their inn and use the yellow room, but Bull had vetoed the idea: it was too on the nose, he said. 

"I suppose I shouldn't give him any hints about how I'll have him hanging from his thumbs by the time this is over," she said, "but you have no sense of drama." 

"Take Bel along, have her dress up in that templar getup of hers," Bull said. "That'll make him nervous." 

And so she sent Miller off with an invitation, and settled in for the response. It came within the hour. The Diamond Lass, this evening, at the seventh bell. A private dinner, to _celebrate_. She had the rest of the day to prepare herself. 

They sat together in Bull's armchair, Josephine draped across his lap, writing board in hand. In the stretches where they did not speak, where he dozed off, still exhausted, she wrote her letter to the baronesse. The woman owed Josephine a favor, and Josephine knew of at least two eligible bachelors who would make a better match for her niece. Breaking off the engagement Sertorius had arranged would be nothing, an opening salvo. 

It was easier than she'd thought it would be, to speak with Bull of such things. He did not seem bored, when Josephine launched into an explanation of Tevinter's dependence on imported metals for the making of weapons, and the profitability and importance of maintaining trade ties, however distasteful both sides found one another, with ore-rich Orlais. He was not revolted, when she explained the nature of the leverage she had over the baronesse, and the incident Josephine had helped smooth over for her, years ago. 

_He can_ seem _any way he wishes_ , she reminded herself, but—no. They had promised honesty. In the past, people had simply humored her in her ramblings. Renata Pentaghast, whom Josephine had managed not to think of in years, had found her work unspeakably dull, and had not hesitated to tell her so. The Iron Bull would not be like her. 

She had his attention once more. She had his gaze following her around the room, marking her steps, her gestures. She had his arm, cradling her back, even as he slept. 

When she blew on the paper and slid off of his lap, Bull stirred and woke, blinking groggily at her. "Hey," he said, scratching his belly. "Done already?" 

He'd been asleep for an hour and a half, and she'd re-written the letter twice in that time, Josephine felt not need to tell him so. She turned to her escritoire and sealed the letter in an envelope, using the Inquisition's signet, not her own. She would give it to Scrivener to post. With a swift bird, it would make it Val Royeaux within two days, and from there… she left off thinking of it. Bull looked expectantly at her, not impatient, only waiting. "I'm going to get dressed for dinner," she said, half-turning back to smile at him. 

He followed Josephine into the bedroom. 

She had one last wonder in her wardrobe for this meeting, one she hardly ever wore. It had been a gift from an atelier who wished to dress the Inquisition's ambassador, and it was not ostentatious, except to trained eyes. Clean white, a little like mourning, a little innocent. Crusted in pearls. Flowing skirts, shot through with pale golden thread. Bull sat at the foot of the bed and watched her dress and adjust her hair in front of her vanity's mirror with a careful eye, and said nothing. He looked better than he had yesterday—rested, and more calm. 

She laced up her stays. Beyond them, the dress did not require much in the way of undergarments, and in the endless heat, she left them off. It boasted a row of diamond buttons up the back, no larger than the nail of her smallest finger, and she pulled her hair aside for Bull to do them up for her. 

His fingers were miraculous. Now, he could kiss the back of her neck, that spot under her ear he'd discovered in that room, rather than just thinking about it. In the mirror, she watched his eye flutter shut, and watched her head tilt back onto his chest as his body enclosed hers, pressing her against the edge of the vanity. "Iron Bull," she murmured, half reproving, half in jest.

"Yeah?" Bull said, one enormous hand already fisted in her skirts, the other cupping one of her breasts. "We in a rush to leave?" 

They had plenty of time, but Josephine could not bring herself to care if they were late. He made sure she followed every movement in the mirror's reflection, tracking the sensation of his calloused palm stroking up her thigh even as it disappeared from view. Slow, just like the morning, every detail given rapt attention. He had catalogued every inch of her skin in some way, an endless, devoted memory for pleasure. 

But Josephine had had her share of thorough lovers; it was his deliberation that made her gasp when he pressed her down to the vanity, his body bent over hers as he rocked her on just one of his fingers. The way he watched them in the mirror, as riveted as a painter at his canvas. Didn't let her look away, either. When her head drooped, her nails digging into the wood, he tilted her chin up with a gentle fingertip. Preserving—not out of desperation, but satisfaction. She did not think she could tire of being memorized with such fascination, or played to such high, precise notes. 

"I want to be there," Bull said, when they were finished, breathing into the side of her neck. 

It took Josephine a long moment to parse his words. She turned around in his arms, and he half-lifted her to sit on the vanity. "You said that if you ever saw him again, you would kill him," she replied, looking in the mirror behind her at the state of her hair, which was ruined. 

Bull shrugged. "I said a lot of things."

"I can't have you _there_ with me," Josephine said, "and you know why." Because bringing him, ravaged as he'd been, to the meeting, and presenting him as evidence, would alert Sertorius to the trap. It all depended on him knowing he owed her, and with Bull at her side, her motives would be all too clear. He could not suspect it was entirely for vengeance. This needed to be about business, a straightforward blackmailing. 

"It'll be all right," he told her, more matter-of-fact than soothing. 

"It won't work." She crossed her arms. "Unless you've changed your mind—" 

He shook his head and leaned down a little, hands bracketing either side of her thighs, so they could look one another in the eye. The expression on his face was steady, thoughtful. He'd been thinking of it since they agreed on a course of action. Her lips pursed a little. 

"I'm don't want to change the plan. I don't need to be next to you, or staring daggers at him from the corner," said Bull. "Everything goes off just the way you want it. I just… Josie." 

 

"Yes?" 

"I want to watch it happen," he said. "I'm with you. In it for the long game. Eyes on the prize." He almost smiled. "I don't need to see his guts spilling on his shoes."

"I see. But?" 

Bull took a breath, and didn't look away. "I need," he said, and paused, "to see you twist the knife." One of his hands rested on her knee. He stroked a thumb over a wrinkle in her skirt. "This is my chance to see him pay. He's gonna walk out with your leash around his neck" 

"If you want…." She struggled to find the phrasing. "If you're having second thoughts, if the gold is not _enough_ , Bull, then tell me." Far be it for Josephine herself to suggest assassins, but certainly, Leliana would be quite angry. Something could be arranged.

"The gold's fine," he said, as though he knew what she was thinking. "Like I said—that's the long game. We're gonna get there, but most of that's in a different world. If he's gonna squirm, I'll be there to see it." Then he raised his eyebrows when he saw the doubt cross her face. " _Just_ see, Josie." 

It wouldn't hurt. There was surely somewhere in the Diamond Lass to hide Bull so he might overhear. After all, if she had faith in anything now, it was his control. But it wasn't doubt in his restraint that made her hesitate. He seemed was so certain, so determined, and she didn't think she could bear to see him disappointed. Even if Sertorius didn't know Bull was there, none of his remorse would be earnest. His mind would not change—they were hardly seeking to change it, after all. Only to exploit it. Bull must know that. 

Josephine touched the curve of his heavy jaw with a finger. She said, "It won't be the same," because it was the truth. 

"It won't." He raised an eyebrow. "It never is. Might feel a little better when I get on the ship tomorrow. Or when I wake up the next day, or the next time someone pours me a drink."

The doubt must have shown on her face; he took her hand in his, pressed his thumb into her palm so it opened under his fingers like a flower. He rubbed along the lines in her skin, feeling the delicate calluses marking the flesh. "Like a good hit," he said, quieter now. She could remember the sting of his flesh under her own with perfect clarity. She would never forget it. "A slap's not much on its own, just a start—"

"But it's what you want," she finished. 

He almost smiled, a wry little turn of his mouth. "Yeah," he said. "It's for me."

And so she went to make her arrangements. 

She gave Cooper and Scrivener the bare outlines of the past week: Sertorius had poisoned Bull. Bull had crawled off to hide in one of Seeker Pentaghast's secret safehouses until the illness passed, as he did not want to be a burden on them all. Josephine had found him, and nursed him back to health. And Bull wished to watch Josephine take her pound of flesh on his behalf. 

"I knew I didn't like that fucker," Cooper said darkly—of course. Josephine had seen all of Sertorius's aides but one ignore Fletcher. "The big man's all right?"

"He's been resting," Josephine said, smoothing down her skirts. She could still feel his hands between her thighs, like a brand. "Tired, but well."

"I know the owner of the Diamond Lass," said Scrivener, "he owes me a favor. If we want to sneak somebody in the back door, we can." 

"Don't be too impressed," Cooper interjected. "Scriv's snuck in that back door plenty of times."

Josephine stared flatly at Cooper, who did not seem, and had never seemed, affected by her most disapproving silences. 

"It's all for the Inquisition," Scrivener said, tossing a ball of paper at Cooper's head. He was the most at ease Josephine had ever seen him, now that she was getting ready to leave. "There's a second level to the Diamond Lass; the owner uses it to watch his patrons. The Iron Bull will be well out of view, there. And, please, for the sake of my paperwork, let the magister leave in one piece." 

She left with Ser Belinda at her back, and an uncomfortable quiet fell over the two of them as they walked. 

"I want you to know," Josephine said, when they were well clear of the inn, "I _am_ sorry. I presumed too much, in offering you a promotion." 

"Messere," Belinda said, her tone neutral, flat, the way Cullen sounded when the Inquisitor upbraided him in public for some failure. Not the jolly templar she'd been, nor the embarrassed young lover Josephine had caught a glimpse of with Miller. 

"You don't wish to simply fly up the ranks, do you?" Josephine asked. She slowed down so that they walked in step with one another. "You may speak freely; I'm very difficult to offend." 

Ser Belinda was not so tall as the Iron Bull, but she was tall enough that Josephine had to look up at her. She looked contemplative, for a time. The chainmail beneath her white surcoat made a faint noise every time it hit hit her greaves. "My lady," she began, and faltered. 

Josephine could wait. 

"I left the inn without my lyrium, that day," Belinda said, finally. "I had thought we'd be back by sundown, and I would be in time for my next dose. I missed it." 

"Ah," Josephine said. 

"I can't go long without it, see," Belinda went on. "People from other Circles, they can last for two days, three, without their draught, but Starkhaven starts you young, soon as you can recite enough of the Chant for the Sisters' liking and swing a sword well enough for your lieutenant. I had my first dose when I was fifteen—a girl. I get dreadful shakes, messere." 

No wonder Belinda had seemed furious, in the hallway. No wonder Miller had been the one awake during their watches. Yet more thoughtlessness with the lives of those who depended on Josephine's care. She had thought to herself—templars were good for unquestioning obedience, and not considered what that _meant_. "Tell me how I can best I can make amends, then," she said. 

Ser Belinda thrust her hands into the pockets of her trousers as they walked. "All sins are forgiven," she said. "All crimes, pardoned. Let no soul harbor guilt. Let no soul hunger for justice." 

"A pretty verse, but not helpful. Tell me what you would have of me, Ser, and I will see it granted. Anything at all, so long as it's within my power." 

"You think the whole of the world wants something from you, messere," Belinda said. "Maybe it does. But I just want to do good, honest work, and see Aurélie—Miller—when I can, and be good to her. Save your amends for Ser Bull." 

By this time, they had reached the Dragons' Den. The dwarven guards at the wall that enclosed it yawned and nodded them through. The Diamond Lass awaited them. There was nothing more to be said. 

Josephine felt her pulse quicken in her throat, like some novice singer preparing for the stage. She had done this a hundred times: made her gentle, veiled threats, leveraged her position, secured this trade concession or that, reminded a potential ally that their place in the scheme of this world was below her own. This time, she was not only doing it for her country, or the Inquisition. It was for Iron Bull. 

Ser Belinda entered the Diamond Lass at her back. Sertorius sat at the table in the center of the room—the rest had been pushed back to the corners.

"Ambassador!" Sertorius said, smiling broadly at her and coming around the table to take both of her hands in his own, freakish, soft ones. "It has been an age, and I see you've found yourself a new companion. Is this a real templar? How fascinating." He stepped around Josephine to examine Ser Belinda and her surcoat. "Tell me, dear girl," he said, to Josephine, "is it true that they _drink_ draughts of raw lyrium? We don't see their type, in the north. Why would we breed wolves when we could have simple, loyal dogs?" 

Ser Belinda stared directly ahead, past Sertorius's curious gaze. Josephine opened her mouth to speak, but she felt a brief, sudden heaviness to her limbs, and the flame on Ser Belinda's surcoat blazed white. Sertorius fell to his knees, clutching at his throat. 

A Silencing. 

Josephine had witnessed one only once, when Cullen and Knight-Commander Barris had separated Lord Dorian and the Inquisitor, years ago, during their short, violent disagreement about the moral equivalence of slavery and the alienage. The Knight-Commander had unleashed his powers, then hauled Lavellan off of Lord Dorian, while Cullen all but carried Dorian out of the library. Josephine had caught far more than the very edges of it, then, and she had felt dull and tired the rest of the day. 

But perhaps Belinda had better control than her Knight-Commander, and a bit of a temper, to boot. This had not been part of the plan, but when a blessing was dropped on Josephine's lap, she knew to use it. Ser Belinda gave Josephine a sweet, sheepish smile, as if to say, _Oh, dear! It must have slipped._

"Why—I do not think Ser Belinda enjoys being spoken to as though she's an animal," Josephine said, recovering her bearings. "Please, Magister Sertorius, take a seat." 

She took her own chair at the table and watched as Sertorius struggled to his feet, his white robes, with their elegant silver sash, stained at the knees from its meeting with the dusty floor. 

"Ambassador," he rasped, "this is very irregular." 

"I'm given to understand that being Silenced feels as though one has had a limb cut off," said Josephine. On the table held nothing but three copies of their finished contract, a quill and an inkwell, and a bottle of wine. He no longer needed to treat her to extravagant meals, now that their organizations were business partners. She poured herself a glass of the wine to gesture with, then looked to Belinda. "Is that true?" 

"I can't rightly say, messere," Belinda said.

"She can't rightly say," Josephine repeated. 

"Ah, this is about the terms," said Sertorius, folding his hands on the table before him. He made a very valiant attempt to "About—your advisor. I should not have been so insistent—but—you did not need to go to Magister Tilani about them. I would have listened, had you laid out your case."

"Ser Belinda," Josephine said, "indulge me. When did you have your last draught of lyrium?" 

"Right before we left."

"And you know that I can't condone violence done in my presence."

Belinda nodded slowly. "Blessed are the peacekeepers, messere." 

"Yes, quite. Please, don't Silence the lord magister again. I need to hear what he has to say about our _terms_."

"It was wrong of me to attempt to displace your, ah, Morrigan," Sertorius said, the very portrait of humility. His face looked drawn. "Let alone the esteemed Madame de Fer. To deliver it as an ultimatum, without any real authority to do so. I ought to have known you would sniff out my lie, and I hope we can put this behind us—" 

"Ser Belinda," Josephine interrupted, "do you hear him?" 

"I do hear him," said Belinda. 

There was the smallest shuffling from above them as Belinda spoke, but Josephine did not chance a look up toward it. The Iron Bull, and Cooper, too, if she had decided to join him.

Sertorius, untroubled by her words, hands trembling, poured a glass of the wine for himself and said, "I assure you, Magister Tilani had some _choice_ words for me, as well. I'm quite out of favor with her set, despite having delivered to the Inquisition to her on a golden platter." 

And he would be far more than out of favor, by the time Josephine was finished with him. "How dreadful for you," she said. Behind her, Belinda made a sympathetic noise. One had to wonder whether Belinda had done this before; she did, after all, run with Cullen and Leliana's crew of pet scoundrels.

"Perhaps a word from you, explaining our misunderstanding—"

"How dreadful," Josephine said, her voice rising above his, as near to shouting as she'd allowed herself in months, "that you think I give one single copper about the _terms of our contract._ " 

She set aside her glass of wine and took up the quill, dipped it in the ink, contemplated the black sheen on its tip, and waited for Sertorius to dig his grave.

"Ah," Sertorius said. "I see. This is about your pet. You've told Magister Tilani what I did to… him, and, well, she does have a fondness for useless creatures. She did take the Pavus boy in, after all, once your lot cast him out. But you must understand, dear, it was all for the best."

"You poisoned him."

"Yes, but it was hardly lethal. You needed to be shown that his kind weren't trustworthy. Tell me, how did you manage to restrain him?" 

"You mistake my meaning." This, here, was what she should have said from the start, rather than bearing up under his barbs silently, allowing him to bait her into a foolish, prideful mistake—"The Iron Bull is one of the Inquisitor's most trusted lieutenants. His Chargers have served us with valor and distinction. Commander Cullen consults with him regularly on military matters. Had you poisoned _me_ , you could not have done worse." 

Her voice was rising again, becoming hoarse with anger. Let it. For the first time, Sertorius looked nervous. 

"He's reaching for his magic," Ser Belinda said. From the corner of Josephine's eye, she saw the sword on her surcoat glowing faintly white, again. "I'm afraid he can't find it." 

"As I said," Josephine replied, "I won't see more violence done. Did you know, Sertorius—Ser Belinda is one of the templars we sent to defend Magister Tilani—do you remember the incident, two years ago? Since then, she's gained extensive knowledge of Tevinter magics." It did not particularly matter whether it was true or not, only that Sertorius believed Josephine's words. Wolves, indeed. 

The white glow ceased. Sertorious seemed to relax. He looked back for something, someone—guards? They would have been taken care of. "I see. I've harmed one Inquisition's assets," he said, turning back to her. 

"You harmed one of the Inquisition's _people_." 

"Yes, of course." There was that smile Josephine hated, the indulgent one. "One of your people. I would be glad to compensate you for your inconvenience, if only you'll remind Magister Tilani of my value to her little Exalted March."

Scrivener's dossier had said, and Josephine had disregarded, at the time—Sertorius had nothing to fall back on, if he did not have Magister Tilani's allies. He had made a gamble, and it would not pay off. Only a fool bet against an Antivan. "I cannot possibly think of what you could offer me," Josephine said, "beyond what these contracts promise." She dipped her quill in the ink once more and signed her name to the topsheet of one of them.

"Why do you think I was recruited? I am rich," he said, "I am powerful, I own property in three countries. Antiva, for example. I hear that the Montilyet family's holdings have been greatly reduced since your girlhood. Perhaps a little parcel of land outside of Rialto? I've been using it as a retreat for my apprentice."

Josephine sighed and signed her name to the second copy of the contract. "I wouldn't take a handkerchief from you, let alone a _house_. Offer me something I want." 

"I've invested in a Rivaini spice fleet," Sertorius offered, "and I will give you my shares. It promises to return a handsome profit." 

"Sailing through the Raiders' waters?" Josephine said. "The protection fees will be exorbitant, and spice fleets are the first to be ransacked when your budget runs dry. Do better." 

Her pen hovered over the third copy, the one that would be kept in a sealed vault, in case of a disagreement. Sertorius swallowed. 

"How foolish of me. You're Antivan," he said, before her pen could touch the page, "and you want money, of course. Consider: a dozen gold ingots for every day your—comrade—was gone."

"Hmm." Josephine dipped her pen in the ink. 

"As well as a generous personal contribution to the Inquisition's coffers, beyond what I've already committed."

"How generous?" she asked

Sertorius named a figure. Ser Belinda, whom Josephine had half-forgotten was standing at her side, let out a shocked little cough at the number. In the short term, it would be a ruinous sum to spend, but, so far as he knew, he would earn it back through his rice and his tea plantations, his nephew's impending marriage, and the gold he had sitting in banks— _Antivan_ banks—collecting its interest. 

"I will take it all, I think," Josephine said. If the land was any good, her parents could use it as a summer home; if it was useless, she could simply sell it on, and be done with it. "Shall we discuss the terms?"

*

It wasn't long to get to the Diamond Lass, but by the time Scrivener, Cooper, and Bull got there, he was winded. He'd been nervous, the first time, when Josie had condemned him to wait outside the inn with Sertorius's bodyguards. No one sat at the tables outside it, today. The doors were shut, and the windows, shuttered. Unusual, for this time of day—not to mention the heat. Had Josie requested privacy, or Sertorius? His hand itched for an axe. But Josie had a full-grown templar at her back, one of Cullen's best, which would be enough to give even an old magister pause. If the worst happened, they were all ready burst in at the first sign of trouble. 

But not him. At the back, a barmaid waited for them in an apron done up in blue ribbon,. It was a classy establishment, after all. Cooper gave her a wink, and she looked thoroughly unimpressed by the sight of the three of them. Just past her, there were three bodies on the ground. 

"The other one's been here," Cooper told Bull, while Scrivener exchanged a few quick words with the barmaid, who didn't look bothered by the bodies. "I don't _think_ they're dead, but they won't be backing up our man in there any time soon."

"No Geirri?" Scrivener was asking the barmaid. 

"The boss is off at the beach for the day," the barmaid said. To her credit, she only looked Bull up and down once through the curly bangs that nearly covered her eyes before opening her palm for Scrivener's coin. A tip, for being stuck here leading Bull around on her off-time. "He said you're welcome to join him, if you're not too busy."

"Tell him I'm always too busy," said Scrivener. "I'm going back to the office. See you there, Coop."

"And I'll be out here when you're done," Cooper said, to Bull, nodding to the bottom of the stairs. He figured Josephine would have insisted on a chaperone, but there wasn't much he could do from a peephole above the room. Come crashing through the ceiling, a Tal-Vashoth cannonball. If that didn't make Sertorius piss himself, nothing would. 

When the barmaid let him up the stairs, the coins jingled in her apron pocket with every step. She was quicker than he was, and waited expectantly at the top, tapping her foot. He still lumbered a little, even though the weakness in his legs was mostly gone. Another day, and he'd be fine. 

She opened a door into a sitting room, obviously furnished for entertaining. High-backed mahogany chairs surrounded a table that took up most of the room. A chaise was shoved up against the wall, done up in blue velvet with little pink flowers embroidered all over it. A little wear and tear, and it was just the kind of thing he'd want in his room back at Skyhold.

Everything was covered in a fine layer of dust, except for a little spot not far from the window. He picked it out, even before she gestured him over and squatted down, pulling out a knot of wood about the size of her fist. 

"You can't see shit, even with two eyes," the barmaid said, dusting her hands off. "You can hear pretty well, though. Don't touch anything." And then she left, shutting the door behind him. He was alone. 

He made himself sit down slowly, even though his ass protested at the hard floor. He balanced himself on his forearm and looked through the hole, slowly. The barmaid was right—he couldn't see much of anything, but he knew the heavy clink of Ser Belinda's gait, the muffled sounds of Josie's slippers on the floor. He'd only spent close time with Sertorius once, but the gentle _sweep_ of robes, the scrape of his chair as he rose—that was him. 

His blood went cold. He was too far up to smell him, the angle too awkward for him to see more than just the edges of his face, his robes. But he knew it in a way he didn't think beatings could erase. Every bone in his body creaked with sudden tension—for one blinding moment, nothing existed but one brand-hot thought: _Get up. Get there, take him down, don't leave enough scraps for a dog to chew. Bel will get Josie out of the way so she doesn't get hurt. Break his jaw. Kick his ribs in. Slam his head against the ground until it's nothing but meat._

The gentle, preening sound of his voice made every hair on Bull's body stand on end. He could rip his larynx out, if he wanted, and see what kind of sound it made under his boot on the tavern floor. "Why would we breed wolves when we could have simple, loyal dogs?" Sertorius was saying, and then the world rocked back and forth. 

He could feel the Silencing in his teeth. Bull'd been near _gaatlok_ when it went off, and even without the sound, the rattling of his brain was still the same. When he opened his eye, Sertorius was on the ground, a pile of robes on the floor.

The hollowness in Bull's chest shifted a little. Was he smiling? Maybe. Sertorius' voice now scrabbled for confidence, and when he turned and stood, Bull could see the flash of uncertainty on his face, a thin, barely hidden fear. Bull liked that look on a magister's face; he always had. Good, he thought, his blood roaring. And then Josie went to work, wielding her pen like a knife. She made him grovel, and Bull drank it in like water. 

"You harmed one of the Inquisition's _people_ ," Josephine yelled, down there.

It went quicker than he thought it might—when Sertorius started offering gold for every day Bull was out of action, he made himself stand up. Time to go. He didn't need to hear them barter over his worth, like he was a piece of meat at the butcher's. The trip down the stairs was slow. In the big scheme of things, nothing much had changed for him. Worth it, he thought, to see the look of terror on his face, to hear him try to scrape at Josie and come away empty handed. 

Cooper was still at the bottom of the stairs, looked him over to make sure he wasn't about to go barreling in the front door to crack heads. She wouldn't be able to stop him. "How bad did our lady ambassador get him?" she asked. 

"She bled him like a pig," Bull said. 

"You good?"

"I'm good. Let's go," he said, his voice a little raspy. 

A granite fountain stood in the sun, a-ways away from the tavern, its top tier two heads taller than Bull. It was surrounded by carts and stalls, the smell of someone frying dough in oil, grilled nug meat on sticks, mushrooms the size of the palm of Bull's hand. Dwarves rushed by on business and hardly spared them a glance. Fletcher and Miller sat at the edge of it in an awkward silence. Fletcher lit up when she saw Cooper, and ducked her head for a kiss to the top of her head.

"Tell me, Iron Bull," Miller said, leaning forward where she sat, "did Bel look _properly_ menacing?" 

"Sure," Bull said. "She Silenced him. You would've been in a puddle on the floor."

"There is just something about that surcoat, I think," Miller sighed, "it is so… elegant, the white—" 

Fletcher pinched her arm to stop her from getting too Orlesian about it. Miller flinched, but didn't yelp. Good control. 

As Bull sat, gold crackled through the rock of the fountain in rivulets, like glue keeping shards of porcelain together. It caught all of their eyes, flowed through the fountain like a wave, and disappeared. They all stared, until Cooper shook her head and said, "Would that my ass could change rock to gold." 

"A poet," Fletcher said. "Miller. Go buy us some of those mushrooms. I know you have some of the ambassador's coin stashed away."

"As you say, ser," Miller grumbled, and hopped off the edge of the fountain to find some for them.

"Good kid," Fletcher added, to Cooper, once Miller was out of earshot. "Can we keep her?" 

"Might be useful to have a human around, and she can do accents, too," Cooper said, contemplative. "I'll ask the Nightingale about it."

Maybe another quarter of an hour passed with them sitting there—Fletcher and Cooper bickered. He idly listened to them speculate about Leliana and the Hero of Ferelden without ever bringing either of them up—"You think the Taint gives ‘em more, you know, _stamina_ in the field? That big darkspawn on the coast wouldn't go down until Charter chopped its head off, you think it goes both ways?" and somewhere in the middle the doors of the Diamond Lass swung open, and Josie appeared. 

She paused to look behind her, and beckoned gently. A few hairs out of place, framing her cheeks, but not a rigid line in her silhouette. Flustered once, but utterly calm. Ser Belinda came into view to stand at her side, at perfect parade rest. Her silver chainmail caught the afternoon sun, glimmered like a signal. They stepped across the threshold and waited. Bull caught himself holding his breath, and then Sertorius appeared. 

They matched, like an old picture of some royal wedding—her in cloud white, and him in some cream-and-silver get-up. Sertorius smiled at her with an unsettling gentleness, an uncle indulging a favored niece. The lesson was complete, after all, and both came out some kind of winner. 

The urge roared back to life—to close the distance at a dead run, and remember how easily flesh gave under his hands when he gripped Sertorius by the neck. It passed because he made it go. Miller had reappeared beside Fletcher and crossed her arms, set her feet in the ground like she could sprint or stay. Neither of them had a smart comment to make, Bull realized, because they were as much as there to get in his way as they were to make sure Josie got out all right. 

He settled his weight on his elbows, hunkered over. Watched Sertorius ask for her hand, squeeze it tightly in his slender fingers. He didn't cast any looks across the way, didn't take any stock of their mismatched set of audience members. Would have been too obvious. 

Josie smiled at him, the picture of courtesy. It was like watching her pull a knife from her belt, and sliding it behind her back. Sertorius's smile as he let her go. The picture of fondness. Bull knew she had turned him inside out by the balls. 

That, more than anything, made him loosen his jaw, stop grinding his teeth into dust. 

And then, retinue in tow, he turned down the street, and disappeared into the crowd. Bull watched the back of his head until it turned the corner. 

The sound of Bel's chainmail brought back his attention—Josie, close enough to block the sun from where he sat, rested a hand on her hip. Next to her, Bel looked pleased as anything. 

"Well?" he said. 

"I've taken everything they offered," Josie said, in low, excited voice, feverish with victory, "enough gold for you to melt down into a new suit of armor, if you wish." 

Bull grunted once, and heaved himself to his feet in a slow, careful motion. Josie put a hand on his arm to steady him, if not in body, in spirit. It stayed there, just a second too long to be casual. "As long as they don't sink the boat," he said. 

"You mean he covers those up?" Cooper cut in, gesturing chestward. 

"Only for special occasions, as I understand it," said Josie. She looked as though she'd come out of a trance. "And I'm given to understand that Scrivener will co-ordinate the transport, by way of Nevarra City?" 

This kicked off fifteen minutes of the two of them talking over the finer details of smuggling massive amounts of money across three borders without anyone noticing—Bull and Bel walked to either side of them, to discourage eavesdroppers. Bull couldn't tell which of them made onlookers more nervous. Miller and Fletcher had dropped into the crowd ahead of and behind them, to watch for threats.

"We'll leave you here, my lady," Cooper said, to Josie, at the head of the grand avenue that led down to the docks. "Unless—"

" _Unless,_ " Fletcher said, materializing at Cooper's side. From the corner of his eye, Bull caught a glimpse of, if not Miller, then Miller's uniform. 

"Iron Bull will be more than sufficient," Josie said. "But—thank you. Both of you. Ser Belinda, a word?" 

Cooper and Fletcher shared a look, bowed, and walked off. 

"Begging your pardon, messere," Bel said, and cleared her throat. "If I could, er, ask you a favor."

Josie looked on patiently, while Bel sorted it out. Templars didn't get much choice in their lives. Masses of them, raised up by the Chantry to be its sword-arm, chained to it with drugs—the Qun demanded a lot from people, but it didn't _take_. Not like that, Bull thought. 

Finally, Bel said, "I'd like to work with Seeker Pentaghast. The Order looked to her, after Therinfal. She's an example to us all. She's good, and righteous. I want to be under her command, when the Herald sends her out to hunt demons." 

"I'll put in a word with the Commander, then," Josie replied, "and I'm sure Cassandra will have no objection." Or she wouldn't when Josie got done with her, which was essentially the same thing.

"That's—that's very kind of you, Lady Montilyet!" 

"I'll see you when you return to Skyhold, then," said Josie, as Bel tried to salute her and bow at the same time. "Do give my fondest regards to Scrivener and his people."

Bel bowed again, and left them. Miller fell in next to her, and Bull heard her say, _Seeker Pentaghast_? before they were swallowed up by the crowds.

And then he and Josie were alone, in the middle of the masses of people coming up from the docks. Oxcarts, gangs of workers carrying sacks, ship's timbers and barrels of supplies—parted around them. 

"Tying up loose ends?" Bull asked, as they set off.

Josie shrugged. "It's uncommon for Cullen to use a templar for simple bodyguard work, when there are so many rifts in the world; people will take notice. What Ser Belinda says of me will be repeated through her entire order. I'd like the tale to paint me in a good light." 

"Damn," he said. "You really can't turn it off, can you."

"Would you want me to?" 

She was going for lighthearted. She even grinned up at him. But the apprehension was there, in the way her eyes searched his face. Somebody in the past had wanted the clock in her head to stop ticking, he bet. Somebody who hadn't been smart enough to appreciate her like Bull had, these past two mornings, with the impression of a pillow still on her cheek, foggy with sleep, no work in her hands. At peace and at ease. Not a pillar of strength, not calculating how to hold herself and direct her gaze, just a person who hated the daylight and wanted to crawl back under the covers.

He'd known, looking at her, nobody really got to see this. You had to earn it. He had.

"I don't know," Bull said. "Would you ask me to stop going out and killing people? It's who you are. You're great at what you do. I like _that_." 

He picked at a scratch on his arm that was scabbing over. He hadn't remembered getting it, but there it was. Josie seemed satisfied with his answer, because she didn't respond.

"Was it what you wanted?" Josephine asked, after a silence, folding her hands in front of her as they walked. 

"Yeah." He shrugged. Seeing him walk by had been enough to tempt him again. The past week, whatever had come out of it between him and Josie, it'd be hard going, and he didn't have any tamassrans to poke around inside his head, but, then, he hadn't had any in years. Once he stopped being too tired to dream much, the heat of his own flesh would come back. The yowling in his blood. It'd be a memory, or it wouldn't be. 

But he hadn't lied. It did something for him. Regret wasn't twisting so hard at his stomach as they made their way towards the docks—the ugly nausea of _unfinished business._ Not as good as a cracked head, but. A start. 

They had to sidestep around a line of dockworkers lugging grain sacks, and after they found their path through the crowd, Bull's hand at her back, she spoke. "I didn't—" she began, thoughtfully, before pausing. Her voice made him refocus. "I know we made the plan, and I went at your behest, but it didn't quite occur to me until I left you'd let me do this for you." 

Whether it was her attempt at _thank you_ or something more, it went unnamed. There wasn't much more to say about it—the gold was all right, and Josie would take the rest from him. 

By then, it wasn't far to where they'd started their stay. The dock was still there, far busier now than the day they'd gotten off it. Workers hustled to and fro, a massive ship took on passengers at the far end, the crew shouting orders at each other in short, clipped Nevarran. It sounded like rocks chipping their teeth. 

The _Siren's Call IV_ sat, tethered in its place, was small and meek enough you could almost couldn't make it out from its neighbors, except it looked like it'd been cobbled together out of five different boats. _A unique vessel,_ Josie had called it, back in Jader, her lip curling just a hair. It was the best thing Bull had seen in days. He let out a sigh. The crew was still loading it up with whatever cargo it was taking back to Skyhold from Cumberland, the two of them notwithstanding. "Great," he said, watching the line of people going on and off the ship. "How soon can we untie this piece of crap?" 

Josie gave a little smile, but her face clouded a little. "Soon." 

"What gives?" He nudged her with an elbow. 

"Everything will be different now." She looked up at him, searching his face. "Not for the worse, perhaps." 

"What, the caravan-load of gold? The magister you're getting ready to destroy?"

"You know what I mean. Us."

"Josie," Bull said, "if you need this thing, you and me, to be a secret, I can't do it." 

Josie took a graceful seat on a crate, relaxed, but not too relaxed, back straight, but not _too_ straight, weighing her response. 

"I mean it," he went on, in the absence of an answer. "I'm not saying we need to put it up on the Chantry board. But I'm not going to be something you keep under the bed and pull out when you need a good time." 

Without a word, she slid her hand into his, and held it. Her two littlest fingers brushed over where the stumps of his had once been. "Do you think me capable of that?" she asked, not hurt-sounding, just curious. The crew of the _Siren's Call_ kept on loading up the ship, walking past them. 

"It'd hurt your rep. Thedas's perfect ambassador, screwing a Tal-Vashoth. Make it harder to deal with people." 

"And you think you will be the worst whisper I've heard behind my back? My family was exiled from Orlais an age ago. We're poor. I went to the University of Orlais on a scholarship, of all things—on _charity_." Josie stared straight ahead at the waters, her hand tightening on his, as she recited on, "I'm known to have an intimate personal friendship with the Divine's spymaster, and to have formed it around the time of my appointment as ambassador. My mother is a baseborn sea captain. I spoke publicly against the—unpleasantness—with Empress Celene and the elves. I resigned suddenly from my post to join a group of heretics." She lifted his hand to her mouth, to kiss his knuckles, just as he'd done this morning. "But you, Iron Bull— _you_ will assuredly be the most unsavory thing I've ever done."

She could always spin a speech. He could tell her struggle to get everything out was earnest— _we're poor_ said with the tightness of defeat, even though Josephine's _poor_ could keep an alienage fed for a year. He took her point. "If you think you've seen unsavory," Bull said, a grin sliding onto his face, "you're gonna be in for a real treat once I get back on my feet." 

Josie laughed a little that, and it brought some light back into her cheeks. But she didn't let go of his hand. She squeezed it once, as though to remind him they were still tethered. "Bull, I meant to ask—are _you_ ready, for what my life entails?"

He blinked once, and cocked his head. 

"I am, in a phrase, insistently public." She did not bend to examine his knuckles, or turn to look out at the sea again. She chose to stare straight into him. These were the facts, after all, and they could not be changed. "After Lavellan, I am the face of the Inquisition in many places, to many people. All these things I've told you—they're common knowledge, in the circles that matter. Or easy enough to find out." 

He didn't know any of them—but then again, she'd never really been the focus of his study when he was still writing back to his superiors in Qunandar. He could sum up most of what he'd reported immediately: _Inquisitor puts her priorities in a militarized Inquisition. Her conflict of interest with her spymaster takes up whatever time she's not planning with the commander & knight-commander. The diplomat is left to handle matters of state as she pleases, on anything other than the treatment of mages. As long as the money keeps coming in, Inquisitor doesn't care. _

"I'm not worried about anything I'm gonna find out about you," he began, but she shook her head.

"My privacy is a joke. There is nothing to be hidden from diplomatic negotiations," Josephine said, with a sigh. "No corner goes unilluminated. What they don't know, they'll know soon enough, and then they'll use it. I have no desire to keep you a secret, but I'm afraid it may be possible for anything to remain a secret at all anymore. If you or any of the Chargers have something you'd like to hide, I'd suggest you bury it very, very deep."

"Oh," said Bull. 

"It has been hard for—others." Now her gaze darted away, came back. "I don't mean to say you can't handle it." 

"I don't really give a crap what people say about me." 

"You run a business. You make your livelihood with whoever has the coin, including nobles." She shrugged. "You might care very much, one day." 

That made him pause. It wasn't going to be enough to just shrug and figure Josie knew what she was doing. Might be that way most of the time, if they were lucky. But her message was clear. _One day my world might crash into yours._

But the quiet had unsettled her. She gently cleared her throat, to unwrap her fingers from his. "You _should_ take time to think about it," she counseled him. "You—"

He bent down and tipped her chin up with a finger, and kissed her. She tasted dry and sweet, like she'd been sampling vermouth at the Lass. Her eyes fluttered shut, and she made a little sound that got lost between their mouths. He liked it—it was content, like a sigh, and he wanted to hear it again. The hand on her back slid down, and he pinched her ass with satisfaction. 

"I don't think any of your political bullshit is going to hold a candle to whatever we just hauled ourselves through," he said, when she squirmed away with a squeak and he lifted up his head. He had to take a breath in the middle of a sentence. "I mean, I dunno. Think we may have frontloaded a lot of the worst to come." 

"And this was dreadful, yes, but suppose someone decides you're my weakness," Josie said. " _Again_. Will it be worth it, then?"

One of the crew members was watching the two of them, had seen them kiss. Bull cupped the back of Josie's neck, stroked a circle at the top of her neck with his thumb, felt her shiver under his touch. "You're right," he said. "But I've got a company of the best mercenaries in Thedas at my back, and a _huge_ weapon."

"It's enormous, yes," she said.

"My axe is pretty big, too," he added, and Josie rolled her eyes. "But you know what I've noticed?" 

"Indulge me," she said, moving into him again, so that she spoke into the corner of his mouth. Like she couldn't help herself. Josephine Cherette Montilyet, necking with a Tal-Vashoth on the Nevarran docks. If she meant to start rumors, this was how they got going. Might as well own them.

"Most southern nobles aren't half as creative as a good magister," he said. "Anybody with a lot of coin needs good steel, sometimes, not just nobles. Whatever happens, you and me can handle it." 

The corner of her eyes crinkled when she smiled up at him. She wanted to believe it. So did he. More, perhaps, than was wise. Of course it seemed good. Attainable, almost easy. It was new. 

The smile dimmed from her face, like she was thinking the same thing. She exhaled through her nose, squared her shoulders so she could look up at him. All business. "You think so?" she asked. 

She wouldn't be caught flat-footed on this, because the fact of the matter was: she was right. This had a solid chance of happening again. Maybe the next time would be blackmail. Extortion. They'd barely gotten through it the first one, but they _had_. 

His hand slid down from her neck to rest on her waist. "We'll have time," he said, "to prove it." 

They had a pile of promises between them. He figured Josephine didn't have much more of an idea which would last, and which would tear themselves in half. Enough, he thought again, to keep gambling on. She leaned forward, then, rested her head at the divot of his chest. She took a deep breath, and for a moment, all knots in her body went loose. "Very well," she murmured, and he kissed her head. 

A man on the boat cleared his throat, called out with a warble— " _Siren's Call_ , ready to set sail?"

"Shall I take you home?" asked Josephine, muffled in his chest. 

"The quicker the better," Bull said, and let her unwind herself from his arms. He followed her up the ramp, Leliana's people making quick work of whatever few things were left to take care of. 

"I'm going to go below in a moment," Josie said at his ear, "to change out of this." She was still wearing the ridiculous white dress. The hem was already dirty from walking around the docks. Sweat beaded along her hairline. She had nobody to impress anymore, nobody to game. 

He gave her a look, and she folded her hands in front of her, took a few steps to the railing. "I want to see us off before I do." 

Ah. That. 

He took up a spot on the railing, leaning on his forearms. He tried to remember what he'd thought of Cumberland upon looking at it for the first time. City full of magic, corpses, magic corpses, a wall that invited invaders to break themselves on it, to try their luck against it. A place to be on his guard above all costs. The shadows were still deadly, and the shit in the street stank like any other place. The only difference was that he was leaving, now, and would never come back here, unless the money was _really_ good.

There was no need to say anything else. It was his habit to face where they were going—he should be standing at the other side, searching the skyline for Jader. But she was here, and she was right. The sun beat down on Cumberland in a golden curtain, the sounds of the marketplace carried on the wind. Soon, the sun would set, and an old mage would totter along the streets, lighting the lamps, as though they'd never been. 

The crew called back and forth as they dropped the ramp to the deck and they raised anchor. He tensed at the lurch of the boat. Thought, for a moment, the vessel they stood on wasn't going anywhere. It might just break off into pieces. It was so quick. He could still be asleep in Josie's fine bed at the inn. Wake up, and be nowhere closer to the end of the fucking slog. His jaw tightened. 

Josie didn't fumble for his hand, or try to weave their fingers together. But she turned her head, and pressed her lips briefly against his shoulder. So quick he might not have noticed it. And then she looked back to the city, teeming with Nevarrans and their ships, all headed somewhere else. Just a brush of reassurance. They were both here. This part, at least, was over. 

Under his feet, the boat rocked back and forth in the shallows of the dock, and then they pushed away, out into the open water. 


End file.
